LSC 
UNC-CH 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 


ENDOWED  BY  THE 

DIALECTIC  AND  PHILANTHROPIC 

SOCIETIES 


9  n.  s 

Haio 
c.2. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


10002207407 


This  BOOK  may  be  kept  out  TWO  WEEKS 
ONLY,  and  is  subject  to  a  fine  of  FIVE 
CENTS  a  day  thereafter.  It  is  DUE  on  the 
DAY  indicated  below: 


FEB  1  4  1968 

I    OCT  0  4 


ii., 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hil 


http://archive.org/details/oldsouthmonographami 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 


ENDOWED  BY  THE 

DIALECTIC  AND  PHILANTHROPIC 

SOCIETIES 


1 


H  a  /  o 


This  BOOK  may  be  kept  out  TWO  WEEKS 
ONLY,  and  is  subject  to  a  fine  of  FIVE 
CENTS  a  day  thereafter.  It  is  DUE  on  the 
DAY  indicated  below: 


...«*» 


1 1 


UNCLE    JEFF    SHIELDS,    LEXINGTON,    VA. 


T 


OLD  SOUTH 


DOOGE 


BY 


H.  M.  HAMILL  D.D. 


& 


Smith  &-  Lamar,  Agents,  Publishing  House  of  the 
•  •  •  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South  •  •  • 
Dallas,  Texas      •       •  Nashville,  Tennessee 


HE  subject-matter  of  this  little 
book  first  took  form  in  an  ad- 
dress before  the  students  of 
Emory  College,  Oxford,  Ga.,  in  June, 
1904.  If  apology  be  needed  for  putting 
it  in  type,  the  writer  finds  it  in  the  re- 
quest of  an  old  woman,  now  eighty-six 
years  of  age,  a  true  daughter  of  the  Old 
South,  whose  lightest  wish  has  been  the 
law  of  his  life  for  more  than  fifty  years. 


. 


THE  OLD  SOUTH 


Y  theme  is  "The  Old  South."  I  have 
no  apology  for  those  who  may  deem 
it  time-worn  or  obsolete.  I  am 
handicapped  in  beginning  by  mem- 
ories of  other  writers  and  speakers 
who  have  dealt  more  worthily  than  I  can  hope 
to  do  with  my  subject.  The  Old  South  has  not 
been  wanting  in  men  to  speak  and  write  upon  it. 
Friend  and  foe  alike  have  exploited  it.  It  has 
been  the  burden  of  poetry  not  always  inspired, 
and  of  oratory  not  always  inspiring.  Not  a  few 
have  been  its  critics  who  knew  it  only  by  hear- 
say. Indeed,  much  of  current  literature  upon 
the  Old  South  is  from  those  who  were  born  after 
it  had  passed  away.  I  have  no  fault  to  find 
with  any  who  have  thus  written  or  spoken,  how- 
ever worthily  or  unworthily,  if  only  it  was  done 
in  kindneso.  If  over  the  dust  of  the  Old  South, 
while  discoursing  upon  its  virtues  or  its  vices, 
any  one  has  dealt  generously  with  the  one  and 
5 


THE     OLD     SOUTH 


fairly  with  the  other,  I  am  content,  though  praise 
or  blame  may  not  always  have  been  wisely  be- 
stowed. 

I  was  born  in  and  of  the  Old  South.  At  six- 
teen, after  a  year  under  General  Lee,  I  received 
my  parole  at  Appomattox,  and  went  home  to 
look  upon  the  ruin  of  the  Old  South.  Whatever 
is  good  or  evil  in  me  I  owe  chiefly  to  that  Old 
South.  Habit,  motive,  ideal,  ambition,  passion 
and  prejudice,  love  and  hatred,  were  formed  in 
it  and  by  it.  My  life  work  as  a  man  has  been 
wrought  under  what  is  called  the  New  South,  but 
inspiration  and  aspiration  to  it  came  out  of  the 
Old  South.  The  spell  it  cast  upon  my  boyhood 
is  strong  upon  me  after  more  than  a  generation 
has  gone.  It  is  not  the  spell  of  enchantment. 
It  has  not  blinded  me  to  bad  or  good  qualities, 
and  after  the  lapse  of  a  half  century  and  de- 
spite the  tenderness  for  it  that  grows  with  the 
passing  years,  I  think  I  can  see  and  judge  the 
Old  South  and  give  account  of  it  more  impartially 
than  one  who  received  it  at  second-hand. 

The  Old  South,  in  itself  and  apart  from  all 
other  considerations,  will  always  be  a  profitable 
study.  It  is  the  one  unique  page  of  our  national 
6 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


history.  Indeed,  it  comprehends  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  of  history  with  scarce  a  parallel. 
I  think  one  will  search  in  vain  history,  ancient  or 
modern,  to  find  a  likeness  to  the  Old  South,  so- 
cially, intellectually,  politically,  or  religiously.  I 
do  not  wonder  that  romancer,  poet,  historian,  and 
philosopher  have  gathered  from  it  material  and 
inspiration.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  past  decade 
has  brought  forth  more  literature  concerning  the 
Old  South  than  the  entire  generation  which  pre- 
ceded it.  Its  body  lies  moldering  in  the  ground, 
but  its  soul  goes  marching  on.  Wherein  espe- 
cially was  it  unique? 


TO  begin  with,  it  was  in  the  South  rather  than 
the  North  that  the  seed  of  American  liberty 
was  first  planted.  Jamestown,  not  Plymouth  Rock} 
was  the  matrix  of  true  Americanism.  Poet  and 
orator  have  made  much  of  the  rock-bound  coas£ 
and  savage  wild  to  which  the  Puritan  fathers 
came,  and  have  had  little  to  say  of  the  Cavaliers 
who  fought  their  way  to  conquest  over  savage 
beast  and  man.  Winthrop,  Standish,  and  Cotton 
7 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


Mather  are  set  forth  by  provincial  and  partisan 
writer  and  speaker  as  exclusive  national  types  of 
pioneer  courage,  wisdom,  and  heroism.  I  have 
read  more  than  one  sneer  in  alleged  national  his- 
tories against  "the  gentlemen  of  Jamestown,"  of 
whom  it  was  said  that  there  were  "eleven  laboring 
men  and  thirty-five  gentlemen."  But  the  histo- 
rians who  sneer  fail  to  note  how  these  same  gen- 
tlemen felled  more  trees  and  did  more  hard  work 
than  the  men  of  the  ax  and  pick.  Long  after 
Jamestown  had  become  a  memory,  I  had  seen  the 
descendants  of  those  same  derided  gentlemen  in 
the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  possessors  of  in- 
herited wealth  and  reared  to  luxury  from  their 
cradles,  yet  toiling  in  the  trenches  or  tramping  on 
the  dusty  highway  or  charging  into  the  mouth 
of  cannon  with  unfailing  cheerfulness. 

I  do  not  disparage  the  stern  integrity  and  high 
achievement  of  the  Puritan  sires.  I  gladly  ac- 
cord them  a  high  place  among  the  fathers  and 
founders  of  the  republic.  But  putting  Puri- 
tan and  Cavalier  side  by  side,  rating  each  fairly 
at  his  real  worth  and  by  what  he  did  to  fix  per- 
manently the  qualities  that  have  made  us  great, 
I  am  confident  I  could  make  good  my  proposi- 
8 


AUNT    HANNAH. 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


tion  that  deeper  down  at  the  foundation  of  our 
greatness  as  a  people  than  all  other  influences 
are  the  qualities  and  spirit  that  have  marked  the 
Cavalier  in  the  Old  World  or  the  New. 

Was  it  not  in  the  Old  South,  for  instance,  that 
the  first  word  was  spoken  that  fired  the  colonial 
heart  and  pointed  the  way  to  freedom  from  the 
tyranny  of  Britain  ?  Later,  when  all  hearts  along 
the  Atlantic  seaboard  were  burning  with  hope  of 
liberty,  was  it  not  one  from  the  Old  South  who 
presided  over  the  fateful  Congress  that  finally 
broke  with  the  mother  country?  And  did  not 
another  from  the  Old  South  frame  the  immortal 
declaration  of  national  independence?  And 
when  the  hard  struggle  for  liberty  was  begun, 
it  was  from  the  Old  South  that  a  general  was 
called  to  lead  the  ragged  Continentals  to  victory. 
Follow  the  progress  of  that  war  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, and  it  will  be  seen  how  in  its  darkest  days 
the  light  of  hope  and  courage  burned  nowhere 
so  bravely  as  in  the  Old  South. 

Seventy-two  years  and  fifteen  Presidents  suc- 
ceeded between  the  last  gun  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  first  gun  fired  upon  Sumter  in  1861.  Nine 
out  of  fifteen  Presidents,  and  fifty  of  the  seventy- 
9 


THE     OLD     SOUTH 


two  years,  are  to  be  credited  to  the  statesmanship 
of  the  Old  South.  What  Washington  did  with 
the  sword  for  the  young  republic,  Chief  Justice 
Marshall,  of  Virginia,  made  permanently  secure 
by  the  wisdom  of  the  great  jurist.  After  him 
came  a  long  line  of  worthy  successors  from  the 
Old  South,  in  the  persons  of  judges,  vice  pres- 
idents, cabinet  officers,  officers  of  the  army  and 
navy,  who  were  called  to  serve  in  the  high  places 
of  the  government.  The  fact  is  that  whatever 
unique  quality  of  greatness  and  fame  came  to  the 
republic  for  more  than  a  half  century  after  it 
was  begun  was  largely  due  to  the  wisdom  of 
Southern  statesmanship.  It  is  hard,  I  know,  to 
credit  such  a  statement  as  to  the  dominating  in- 
fluence in  our  early  national  history,  now  that 
nearly  fifty  years  have  passed  since  a  genuine  son 
of  the  South  has  stood  by  the  helm  of  the  ship  of 
State. 

As  with  the  statesmanship,  so  with  the  military 
leadership  of  the  Old  South.  The  genius  for 
war  has  been  one  of  the  gifts  of  the  sons  of  the 
South  from  the  beginning,  not  only  as  fighters 
with  a  dash  that  would  have  charmed  the  heart 
of  Ney,  but  as  born  commanders,  tacticians,  and 

IO 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


strategists.  In  the  two  great  wars  of  the  repub- 
lic, Great  Britain  and  Mexico  were  made  to  feel 
the  skill  and  courage  of  Southern  general  and 
rifleman.  In  the  Civil  War — greatest  of  modern 
times,  and  in  some  respects  greatest  of  all  time — 
the  greater  generals  who  commanded,  as  well  as 
the  Presidents  who  commissioned  them,  were 
born  on  Southern  soil,  and  carried  into  their  high 
places  the  spirit  of  the*  Old  South.  In  the 
extension  of  the  republic  from  the  seaboard  to  the 
great  central  valley,  and  beyond  to  the  mountains 
and  the  Pacific,  Southern  generalship  and  states- 
manship led  the  way.  The  purchase  of  Louisi- 
ana, the  annexation  of  Texas  and  the  Southwest, 
were  conceived  and  executed  chiefly  by  Southern 
men. 

So  for  more  than  fifty  formative  years  of  our 
history  the  Old  South  was  the  dominating  power 
in  the  nation,  as  it  had  been  in  the  foundation 
of  the  colonies  out  of  which  came  the  repub- 
lic, and  later  in  fighting  its  battles  of  independ- 
ence and  in  framing  its  policies  of  government. 
And  I  make  bold  to  reaffirm  that  whatever 
strength  or  symmetry  the  republic  had  acquired 
at  home,  or  reputation  it  had  achieved  abroad,  in 


THE     OLD     SOUTH 


those  earlier  crucial  years  of  its  history  were 
largely  due  to  the  patriotism  and  ability  of  South- 
ern statesmanship.  Why  that  scepter  of  leader- 
ship has  passed  from  its  keeping,  or  why  the 
New  South  is  no  longer  at  the  front  of  national 
leadership,  is  a  question  that  might  well  give 
pause  to  one  who  recalls  the  brave  days  when  the 
Old  South  sat  at  the  head  of  the  table  and  di- 
rected the  affairs  of  the  nation. 


SOCIALLY,  the  Old  South,  like  "all  Gaul," 
was  divided  into  three  parts — the  slavehold- 
ing  planters,  the  aristocrats  of  the  social  system, 
few  relatively  in  numbers  but  mighty  in  wealth 
and  authority;  the  negro  slaves,  who  by  the  mil- 
lions plowed  and  sowed  its  fields  and  reaped  its 
harvests,  and  who  for  hundreds  of  years,  both  in 
slavery  and  freedom,  have  found  contented 
homes  in  the  South ;  and  lastly  the  nonslavehold- 
ing  whites,  a  distinctly  third  estate. 

The  nonslaveholding  white  of  the  Old  South 
was  essentially  sui  generis.  He  was  really  a  vital 
part  of  a  singular  semifeudal  system,  yet,  as  far 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


as  he  could,  he  maintained  his  independence  of  it. 
He  was  between  two  social  fires.  His  lack  of 
culture  and  breeding,  his  rude  speech  and  dress, 
barred  him  from  the  big  house  of  the  planter, 
except  as  a  sort  of  political  dependent  or  hench- 
man. On  the  other  hand,  to  the  negro  he  was 
variously  known  as  "poor  folks,"  "poor  white 
trash,"  and  at  best  as  "half-strainers."  While 
there  was  not  a  little  in  common  between  him 
and  the  master  of  slaves,  he  had  literally  no  deal- 
ings with  the  negro.  Here  and  there,  if  one 
rose  to  ownership  of  land  or  slaves  by  dint  of 
extraordinary  industry  or  good  fortune,  his  so- 
cial position  was  scarcely  improved.  He  became 
like  the  shoddy  "New  Riches"  of  our  own  time, 
in  a  class  to  himself. 

There  are  not  a  few  illusions  as  to  these  "crack- 
er" whites,  which  fanciful  magazine  and  dialect 
writers  have  helped  to  spread.  A  benevolently 
intended  effort  has  been  in  progress  for  a  genera- 
tion on  the  part  of  certain  sentimentalists,  with 
more  money  than  wisdom,  to  civilize  and  Chris- 
tianize what  they  are  pleased  to  call  the  "moun- 
tain whites."  One  would  gather  from  the  pleas 
made  before  religious  conventions,  and  from  the 
13 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


facile  writers  who  have  made  these  whites  their 
special  care,  that  they  have  dwelt  continually  in 
religious  darkness  and  destitution,  and  greatly 
needed  the  alien  missionary  to  shed  the  efful- 
gence of  his  superior  civilization  and  Christianity 
upon  him.  I  think  I  am  in  a  position  to  say 
that  this  forlorn  and  destitute  Southern  moun- 
taineer, true  to  his  ancient  characteristics,  has 
received  these  effusive  visitors  and  their  benev- 
olences with  one  eye  partly  closed  and  with  con- 
tinued cheerful  expectoration  at  knot  holes  in  the 
neighboring  fence.  I  am  reminded  of  one  of 
Bishop  Hoss's  repertoire  of  anecdotes,  all  of 
which  have  pith  and  point.  Of  such  a  moun- 
taineer as  I  am  depicting,  tall,  lank,  sinewy, 
frowzy,  "a  bunch  of  steel  springs  and  chicken 
hawk,"  a  tourist  satirically  inquired :  "May  I  ask, 
my  friend,  if  you  are  a  member  of  the  human 
species  ?"  "No,  by  gum,"  said  the  mountaineer ; 
"I'm  an  East  Tennesseean." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  are  few  people  so 
thoroughly  imbued  with  the  religious  spirit  as 
these  same  "cracker"  mountain  whites,  though 
it  is  a  religion  of  the  Old  rather  than  of  the 
New  Testament,  in  the  crude  ethics  and  doctrines 
14 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


which  they  commonly  hold.  Even  the  Kentucky 
feudist  is  after  a  sort  an  Old  Testament  religion- 
ist, who  has  not  gone  beyond  the  idea  of  the 
"blood  avenger"  of  Mosaic  permission.  Rude, 
uncouth,  ignorant  of  books  as  the  poor  whites  of 
the  Old  South  were  and  continue  largely  to  be,  I 
pay  them  the  sincere  personal  tribute  of  admira- 
tion for  the  homespun  virtues  that  have  marked 
them  as  a  peculiar  people.  For  two  years  I 
lived  in  their  wildest  mountain  fastnesses,  went 
in  and  out  of  their  rude  cabins,  taught  their  youth, 
broke  bread  at  their  tables,  and  worshiped  God 
with  them  in  their  log  meetinghouses.  I  have 
earned  a  right,  therefore,  by  personal  contact  and 
knowledge  to  resent  with  warmth  the  imputa- 
tions under  which  the  cracker  white,  highland  or 
lowland,  is  too  often  made  to  suffer.  Even  so 
distinguished  an  authority  as  the  New  York 
Advocate j  in  a  recent  article  devoted  to  this  class, 
permitted  the  usual  distortion  of  fact  in  all  things 
pertaining  to  Southern  problems. 

Of  this  rude  figure  of  the  Old  South,  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  no  hospitality  of  the  planta- 
tion mansion  ever  eclipsed  that  of  his  humble 
home  to  the  man  who  sought  shelter  beneath  it. 


HE     OLD     SOUTH 


If  he  never  forgave  a  wrong,  he  never  forgot  to 
repay  a  kindness.  His  honesty  was  such  that  a 
man's  pocketbook  was  commonly  as  safe  in  the 
trail  of  a  mountaineer  or  lowlander  as  in  the 
vault  of  a  bank.  If  he  had  not  books  or  learning, 
there  was  something  quite  as  good  for  his  uses 
which  he  had  the  knack  of  inheriting  or  acquir- 
ing— a  home-grown  wit  and  shrewdness  of  judg- 
ment of  men  and  things.  Religiously,  he  took 
his  code  and  doctrines  directly  from  the  Bible, 
and  too  often  patterned  after  both  good  and  evil 
in  that  book.  He  saw  no  incongruity  in  dis- 
pensing homemade  whisky  and  helping  on  a 
protracted  meeting  at  the  call  of  his  circuit  rider. 
As  to  his  politics,  he  followed  leaders  only  as  he 
respected  them,  and  was  always  a  thorn  in  the 
flesh  of  the  political  trickster.  If  the  master  of 
slaves  was  an  aspirant  for  office,  and  was  pos- 
sessor of  both  manhood  and  money,  the  cracker 
white  easily  became  his  supporter.  Usually  hold- 
ing the  balance  of  power,  he  taught  many  a  sharp 
lesson  to  unworthy  men  who  sought  his  political 
favor.  Generally  the  poor  white  was  hostile  to 
slavery;  yet  singularly  enough,  true  to  the  pa- 
triotism and  loyalty  strangely  formed  in  him  for 

1 6 


SAM     DAVIS. 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


centuries  in  his  isolated  condition,  when  the  ar- 
mies of  the  North  began  their  invasions  of  the 
South,  these  same  whites  by  the  tens  and  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  put  on  the  gray,  and  fell  into 
line  under  the  generalship  of  the  owners  of  plan- 
tation and  slave.  If  there  was  ever  such  a  prov- 
erb current  among  them  as  "the  rich  man's  war, 
but  the  poor  man's  fight,"  I  did  not  hear  it  from 
the  lips  of  the  brave  fellows  from  the  log  cabins 
who  became  the  famous  fighters  of  the  Confed- 
eracy. Over  their  lowly  and  sometimes  lonely 
and  unkept  graves  I  would  lovingly  inscribe  that 
exquisitely  pathetic  epitaph  which  one  may  read 
upon  a  Confederate  monument  in  South  Carolina, 
dedicated  especially  to  the  men  who  had  nothing 
to  fight  for  or  die  for  but  patriotism  and  honor : 

This  monument  perpetuates  the  memory  of  those 
who,  true  to  the  instincts  of  their  birth,  faithful  to  the 
teaching  of  their  fathers,  constant  in  their  love  for  the 
State,  died  in  the  performance  of  their  duty;  who  have 
glorified  a  fallen  cause  by  the  simple  manhood  of  their 
lives,  the  patient  endurance  of  suffering,  and  the  heroism 
of  death;  and  who,  in  the  dark  hours  of  imprisonment 
and  the  hopelessness  of  the  hospital,  in  the  short,  sharp 
agony  of  the  field,  found  support  and  consolation  in  the 
belief  that  at  home  they  would  not  be  forgotten. 

2  17 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


BETWEEN  the  negro  and  his  master  there 
was  ever  in  general  a  feeling  of  mutual  re- 
spect and  confidence.  If  I  could  gather  from  the 
Old  South  its  most  beautiful  and  quaint  conceits 
and  incidents,  I  would  find  none  so  full  of  pathos 
and  interest  as  the  long-continued  and  ever-deep- 
ening affection  that  often,  indeed  I  might  say 
commonly,  bound  together  the  white  master  and 
the  black  slave.  Neither  poverty  nor  ruin,  nor 
changed  conditions,  nor  disruption  of  every  or- 
der, social  and  political,  was  effectual  in  breaking 
this  bond  of  loyalty  and  love;  and  now,  so  long 
after  the  period  of  enfranchisement  has  come,  if 
I  wanted  concrete  evidence  of  the  singular  beauty 
of  the  social  system  of  the  Old  South,  I  should 
summon  as  my  witnesses  those  lingering  relics 
of  the  ante-bellum  order — the  "old  massa"  and 
the  old  negro.  Before  the  last  of  that  era  are 
gone  I  should  be  glad  to  contribute  to  some  such 
monument  as  that  proposed  by  ex-Governor  Tay- 
lor— a  trinity  of  figures  to  be  carved  from  a  sin- 
gle block  of  Southern  marble,  consisting  of  the 
courtly  old  planter,  high-bred  and  gentle  in  face 
and  manner;  the  plantation  "uncle,"  the  counter- 
part in  ebony  of  the  master  so  loyally  served  and 
18 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


imitated;  and  the  broad-bosomed  black  "mam- 
my," with  varicolored  turban,  spotless  apron, 
and  beaming  face,  the  friend  and  helper  of  every 
living  thing  in  cabin  or  mansion. 

I  would  that  I  had  the  power  to  put  before  you 
vividly  and  really  the  strange  and  beautiful  social 
life  of  the  Old  South.  It  was  Arcadian  in  its 
simplicity  and  well-nigh  ideal  in  its  conditions. 
It  was  a  reproduction  of  the  palmiest  days  and 
best  features  of  feudalism,  with  little  of  the  evil 
of  that  system.  I  know  I  am  confronted  by  a 
host  of  critics  and  maligners  of  the  so-called 
"slaveocracy"  or  "oligarchy"  of  the  Old  South. 
I  have  often  read  and  heard  of  its  despotism  and 
cruelty  from  those  who  did  not  know  or  did  not 
intend  to  be  truthful  or  just.  The  war  that  swept 
slavery  and  the  slaveholder  out  of  existence  was 
inspired  and  envenomed  by  such  misrepresenta- 
tion. "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  was  a  museum  of 
barbarities  set  forth  as  the  ordinary  life  of  the 
Old  South,  a  composite  of  brilliant  and  brutal 
falsehoods.  I  have  no  defense  of  feudalistic 
subjection  of  the  many  to  the  few,  nor  am  I  a 
friend  to  caste.  Yet  I  have  read  history  in  vain 
and  studied  human  progress  to  small  account  if 
19 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


I  have  not,  with  others,  discovered  that  a  true 
development  of  society,  the  stability  of  govern- 
ment, the  conservation  of  the  rights  of  all  classes, 
depend  largely  upon  a  social  system  in  which  one 
class,  few  in  numbers,  capable  and  conscientious, 
rules  the  other  classes.  A  pure  democracy  is  the 
dream  of  the  idealist,  and  would  be  unprofitable 
even  in  the  millennium.  The  men  who  own  the 
lands  of  a  country,  its  moneys,  ships,  and  com- 
merce, who  maintain  the  traditions  of  the  past, 
and  trace  their  blood  to  the  beginnings  of  a  coun- 
try's existence — these  will  inevitably  become  the 
leaders  and  rulers  of  a  country.  So  the  Old 
South  had  its  aristocracy,  whose  leaders  laughed 
at  the  doctrine  of  equality  as  proclaimed  by  sen- 
timentalists at  home  and  abroad. 

This  Old  South  aristocracy  was  of  threefold 
structure — it  was  an  aristocracy  of  wealth,  of 
blood,  and  of  honor.  It  was  not  the  wealth  of 
the  shoddy  aristocracy  that  here  and  there,  even 
in  the  New  South,  has  forced  itself  into  notice 
and  vulgarly  flaunts  its  acquisitions.  It  came  by 
inheritance  of  generations  chiefly,  as  with  the 
nobility  of  England  and  France.  Only  in  the 
aristocracy  of  the  Old  World  could  there  be  found 
20 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


a  counterpart  to  the  luxury,  the  ease  and  grace  of 
inherited  wealth,  which  characterized  the  ruling 
class  of  the  Old  South.  There  were  no  gigantic 
fortunes  as  now,  and  wealth  was  not  increased 
or  diminished  by  our  latter-day  methods  of  spec- 
ulation or  prodigal  and  nauseating  display.  The 
ownership  of  a  broad  plantation,  stately  country 
and  city  homes,  of  hundreds  of  slaves,  of  accumu- 
lations of  money  and  bonds,  passed  from  father 
to  children  for  successive  generations.  Whatever 
cohesiveness  the  law  could  afford  bound  such 
great  estates  together,  so  that  prodigality  or 
change  could  least  affect  them.  Here  and  there 
mansions  of  the  old  order  of  Southern  aristoc- 
racy are  standing  in  picturesque  and  melancholy 
ruin,  as  reminders  of  the  splendor  and  luxury  of 
the  ante-bellum  planter.  A  few  months  ago  I 
looked  upon  the  partly  dismantled  columns  of  a 
once  noble  home  of  the  Old  South,  about  which 
there  clustered  thickly  the  memories  of  a  great 
name  and  family  which  for  generations  had  re- 
ceived the  homage  of  the  South.  As  a  child  I 
had  seen  the  spacious  mansion  in  the  day  of  its 
pride,  as  the  Mecca  of  political  leaders  who  came 
to  counsel  with  its  princely  owner,  or  as  the  cen- 

21 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


ter  of  a  hospitality  that  never  intermitted  until 
the  end  of  wealth  came  with  the  desolations  of 
war.  The  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mold  of 
form  made  it  famous  as  a  social  magnet.  In 
those  old  days,  its  beautifully  kept  lawns,  its  am- 
ple shrubbery,  its  primeval  park  of  giant  oaks, 
its  bewildering  garden  of  flowers,  its  great  or- 
chards, its  long  rows  of  whitewashed  negro 
cabins,  its  stables  and  flashing  equipages  and 
blooded  horses  and  dogs,  the  army  of  darkies  in 
its  fields,  the  native  melody  of  their  songs  rising 
and  falling  in  the  distance,  the  grinding  of  cane 
or  ginning  of  cotton,  the  soft-shod  corps  of 
trained  servants  about  the  mansion,  the  mingling 
of  bright  colors  of  innumerable  visitors,  the  bril- 
liancy of  cut  glass  and  silver,  the  lavishness  of 
everything  that  could  tempt  the  eye  or  palate — 
was  like  a  picture  from  the  scenes  of  Old- World 
splendor  rather  than  of  a  young  Western  repub- 
lic. As  I  looked  and  brooded  over  this  ruin  of 
a  long-famous  home,  its  glory  all  gone,  its  light 
and  laughter  dim  and  silent,  I  paid  tribute  to  an 
aristocracy  of  wealth,  pleasure-loving  indeed, 
with  the  inherent  weaknesses  of  transmitted  es- 
tate, but  one  which,  having  freely  received,  freely 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


gave  of  its  abundance  in  a  hospitality  eclipsing 
any  people  whom  the  world  has  known. 

Porte  Crayon,  in  Harper's  Magazine  long  be- 
fore the  war,  and  Thomas  Nelson  Page,  in  these 
later  days,  have  essayed  by  pencil  and  pen  to  set 
forth  the  charm  of  that  wonderful  hospitality  and 
home  life  of  the  Old  South.  I  saw  the  last  of  it. 
With  my  parole  in  my  pocket,  returning  home- 
ward through  Virginia  with  other  Confederates, 
hungry  and  foot-sore,  we  turned  aside  from  our 
army-beaten  road  to  a  spacious  plantation  man- 
sion on  the  crest  of  a  hill,  under  whose  porch  sat 
a  lonely  old  man,  the  one  living  creature  we  could 
discern.  When  we  asked  for  bread,  he  excused 
himself  for  a  moment  on  the  plea  that  family 
and  servants  were  gone,  and  that  he  must  do  our 
bidding.  In  a  little  while  he  returned  with  a 
huge  platter  of  bread  and  meat,  apologizing  for 
a  menu  so  little  varied.  When  we  had  eaten  as 
only  Confederate  soldiers  could  eat  and  were 
filled,  we  took  pieces  of  money  from  our  little 
store  and  tendered  him  in  pay.  I  can  never  for- 
get the  big  tears  that  welled  up  in  the  eyes  of 
the  old-time  Virginian  and  the  flush  on  his  cheeks, 
as  he  said :  "No,  boys ;  it  is  the  last  morsel  of  food 
23 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


that  the  enemy  has  left  me.  There  is  not  a  living 
creature  or  an  atom  of  food  remaining,  but  there 
is  not  money  enough  in  both  armies  to  tempt  my 
poverty.  I've  kept  it  up  as  long  as  I  had  it  to 
give." 

Down  under  all  this  wealth  of  fertile  field  and 
dusky  laborer  and  palatial  home,  there  was  some- 
thing in  which  the  old-time  Southerner  took  a 
pride  beyond  that  which  he  felt  in  material  wealth. 
His  aristocracy  of  wealth  was  as  nothing  com- 
pared to  his  aristocracy  of  blood.  An  old  fam- 
ily name  that  had  held  its  place  in  the  social  and 
political  annals  of  his  State  for  generations  was 
a  heritage  vastly  dearer  to  him  than  wealth.  Back 
to  the  gentle-blooded  Cavaliers  who  came  to 
found  this  Western  world,  he  delighted  to  trace 
his  ancestry.  There  could  be  no  higher  honor  to 
him  than  to  link  his  name  with  the  men  who  had 
planted  the  tree  of  liberty  and  made  possible  a 
great  republic.  Whatever  honors  his  forbears 
had  won  in  field  or  forum,  whatever  positions  of 
public  importance  they  had  graced,  he  had  at  his 
fingers'  ends,  and  never  grew  weary  of  rehears- 
ing. I  have  nothing  but  tenderness  for  this  old- 
time  weakness  of  the  Southerner,  if  weakness 
24 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


it  can  be  called.  To  glory  in  one's  blood  for 
centuries  past,  if  only  kept  pure,  to  take  pride 
in  the  linking  of  one's  name  and  fame  with  the 
history  of  one's  country,  to  grow  gentler  and 
truer  and  more  self-respecting  because  of  the  vir- 
tues of  a  long  line  of  ancestors  who  have  lifted 
a  family  name  to  deserved  eminence,  has  to  the 
writer  seemed  a  noble  sentiment.  I  know  how 
fools  have  made  mock  of  it,  and  how  silly  people 
in  the  South  have  sometimes  brought  it  into 
contempt;  but  I  set  forth  in  pride  and  gratitude 
for  the  Old  South  as  one  of  its  distinguishing 
characteristics  this  devotion  to  the  memory  and 
traditions  of  its  ancestry.  If  here  and  there  the 
course  of  transmitted  blood  lapsed  into  habit  or 
deed  of  shame,  it  happened  so  rarely  that  it  set 
the  bolder  in  contrast  the  aristocracy  of  gentle 
blood.  ''Blood  will  tell."  I  remember  as  a  boy 
watching  admiringly  and  yet  a  little  enviously  the 
graceful  and  sometimes  reckless  military  evolu- 
tions of  a  hundred  or  more  young  bloods,  who 
were  making  holiday  of  the  art  of  war.  Trim, 
natty,  elegant  youngsters  they  were,  in  scarlet 
and  gold,  the  scions  of  great  families.  I  can  re- 
member wondering,  as  I  watched  them,  if  the 
25 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


same  dash  and  brilliancy  that  marked  them  as 
gala  day  soldiery  would  be  maintained  by  them 
in  the  storm  of  battle  which  was  making  ready  to 
break  upon  us.  I  had  my  answer.  One  day 
in  Virginia  the  fortunes  of  war  threw  my  regi- 
ment at  elbows  with  theirs.  Glitter  and  gold 
and  scarlet  were  all  bedimmed ;  but  the  gay  laugh, 
the  Cavalier  dash,  the  courage  that  never  quailed, 
were  with  them  still  as  they  swung  into  a  des- 
perate charge,  singing  one  of  their  old  cadet  songs 
as  lightly  as  a  mocking  bird's  trill. 

If  any  one  should  seek  for  the  secret  of  that 
singular  bravery,  that  supreme  contempt  of  pain 
and  privation  and  indifference  to  death  that  dis- 
tinguished our  Southern  soldiery  and  won  the  ad- 
miration of  its  enemies,  I  tLink  it  will  be  found 
largely  in  the  ambition  of  the  younger  generation 
to  walk  worthily  after  the  steps  of  their  fathers. 
Homogeneous  in  its  citizenship,  changing  its  cus- 
toms little  with  passing  years,  slow  to  imbibe  the 
spirit  of  other  countries  and  of  other  sections  of 
our  own  country,  constant  to  its  own  ideals,  and 
always  a  law  unto  itself,  in  no  country  on  the  face 
of  the  earth  was  a  good  name  and  family  dis- 
26 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


tinction  more  prized  and  potent  than  in  the  Old 
South. 

Linked  indissolubly  with  this  aristocracy  of 
wealth  and  of  blood  was  one  which,  in  my  judg- 
ment, was  stronger  than  either,  and  which  ex- 
tended beyond  the  lines  of  those  who  were  born 
to  the  purple  of  wealth  or  the  pride  of  a  great 
name.  I  do  not  know  better  how  to  denominate 
it  than  this — the  aristocracy  of  honor.  Proud  of 
their  great  homes  and  positions  of  leadership, 
and  boastful  of  their  high  descent,  the  aristo- 
crats of  the  Old  South,  true  to  the  Cavalier  tra- 
ditions, erected  an  ethical  system  that  defined  and 
regulated  personal  and  public  matters  and  be- 
came the  inflexible  code  of  every  Southern  gen- 
tleman. Its  foundation  was  laid  in  a  man's  "hon- 
or," and  the  honor  of  a  gentleman  was  the  su- 
preme test  and  standard  of  every  relation,  public 
and  private.  The  extremes  of  this  old  Southern 
ethical  code  were  illustrated,  on  the  one  part,  by 
the  maxim  that  "a  man's  word  is  his  bond,"  which 
meant  that,  the  word  of  honor  once  passed  be- 
tween men,  it  must  be  as  inviolable  as  life  itself. 
Practically,  it  came  to  mean,  as  the  present  gen- 
eration little  knows  or  appreciates,  that  nine- 
27 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


tenths  of  the  business  of  the  Old  South  was  a 
mere  promise  to  pay,  and  that  its  millions  rested 
from  year  to  year  upon  the  faith  and  honor  that 
underlay  its  vast  credit  system.  A  gentleman  of 
the  Old  South  might  be  guilty  of  not  a  few  pecca- 
dillos. He  might  sin  easily  and  often  against 
himself,  but  woe  to  the  man  who  sinned  against 
other  men  by  withholding  what  was  due  and  had 
been  promised  "on  honor."  Personally  I  have 
known  men  of  large  business  affairs  whose  whole 
fortunes  depended  on  the  passing  of  a  word,  and 
who  on  the  instant  would  have  surrendered  their 
last  dollar  to  make  good  that  "word  of  honor." 
Nor  was  this  exceptional.  It  was  bred  in  the  bone 
and  flesh  of  every  old-time  Southern  boy  thai 
upon  this  word  of  personal  faith  the  gentleman 
must  take  his  stand,  and  at  whatever  cost  of  com- 
fort or  convenience  or  self-denial  or  sacrifice, 
even  to  the  death,  he  must  make  it  good.  Such 
was  the  code  of  honor  upon  its  business  side. 

There  was  another  illustration  of  the  code  of 
a  more  somber  kind,  now  many  years  obsolete. 
It  was  by  the  crack  of  pistol  and  flash  of  sword 
that  in  the  old  time  not  infrequently  were  de- 
termined the  fine  points  of  honor.  Long  ago  this 
28 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


"code  duello,"  with  its  Hotspur  partisans,  passed 
away,  and  I  thank  God  for  the  gentler  spirit  that 
has  come  in  its  stead.  With  all  of  its  blood  and 
brutality,  however,  it  had  one  merit  which  I  am 
frank  to  allow  it.  It  compelled  one  to  circum- 
spection in  what  he  said  and  did,  or  it  made  him 
pay  instant  price  for  his  wrongdoing.  It  dif- 
ferentiated the  man  of  courage  from  the  bully 
and  the  sneak,  and  it  set  in  bold  relief  the  marks 
of  the  gentleman.  I  am  glad  to  say,  too,  that  dur- 
ing the  long  and  evil  reign  of  the  code  duello 
satisfaction  in  money  and  by  damage  suits  at  law 
was  not  as  popular  as  now.  The  Kentuckian 
whose  bloody  face  provoked  the  inquiry,  "What 
ails  you?"  answered  by  the  code  and  card  when 
he  replied,  "I  called  a  gentleman  a  liar."  The 
kind  of  gentleman  who  would  salve  the  wounded 
honor  of  his  person  or  family  by  a  check  was 
unknown  or  unrecognized  before  the  war. 

If  one  wishes  to  see  the  old-time  planter  at 
his  best,  he  will  find  him  as  the  pencils  of  Page, 
Harris,  and  Hopkinson  Smith  have  drawn  him — 
courtly,  genial,  warm-hearted,  gracious,  proud 
of  his  family,  boastful  of  his  ancestral  line,  a 
lover  of  gun  and  dog  and  horse  and  mint  julep, 
29 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


an  incomparable  mixer  in  the  society  of  well- 
bred  ladies  and  gentlemen,  as  unique  and  dis- 
tinguished a  figure  as  ever  graced  the  ball  or 
banquet  room,  the  political  forum,  or  the  field 
of  honor.  His  race  will  soon  be  extinct,  and 
only  the  kindly  voice  and  pen  of  those  who  knew 
him  and  loved  him  in  spite  of  his  weaknesses 
will  truly  perpetuate  his  memory.  For  two 
hundred  years  and  more  his  was  the  conspicuous 
and  unrivaled  figure  upon  the  social  and  polit- 
ical stage  of  our  history.  The  good  that  he  did 
lives  after  him ;  may  the  evil  be  interred  with  his 
bones ! 


SIDE  by  side  with  the  aristocrat,  waiting  def- 
erentially to  do  his  bidding,  with  a  grace  and 
courtliness  hardly  surpassed  by  his  master,  I 
place  the  negro  servant  of  the  Old  South.  If 
one  figure  was  unique,  the  other  is  not  less  so. 
Either  figure  in  the  passing  throng  would  quick- 
ly arrest  your  attention.  I  am  frank  to  confess 
to  a  tender  feeling  for  those  faithful  black  serv- 
itors of  t:.e  Old  South— the  "Uncle  Remuses" 
30 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


and  "Aunt  Chloes"  of  picture  and  poetry.  On 
the  great  plantations,  in  their  picturesque  col- 
ors, in  constant  laughter  and  good  nature,  well 
fed  and  clothed  and  generally  well-kept  and  mod- 
erately worked,  the  negro  of  slavery  lived  his 
careless,  heart-free  life.  The  specter  of  hunger 
and  want  never  disquieted  him.  His  cabin,  cloth- 
ing, food,  garden,  pocket  money,  and  holidays 
came  without  his  concern.  I  think  I  state  the  truth 
when  I  say  that  for  the  millions  of  slaves  of  the 
Old  South  there  were  fewer  heartaches  than 
ever  troubled  a  race  of  people.  Freedom  may 
be  an  inestimable  boon.  I  know  that  poet  and 
orator  have  so  declared.  But  when  I  look  upon 
the  care-worn  faces  of  the  remnant  of  old- 
time  negroes  who  have  been  testing  freedom  for 
a  generation  and  have  found  it  full  of  heartache 
and  worry,  I  take  exception  to  the  much-vaunted 
doctrine  of  liberty  as  the  panacea  for  all  human 
ills.  An  old  darky,  with  white  head  and  shuf- 
fling feet  and  haunted  look  in  his  eyes,  stopped 
the  other  day  at  the  door  of  my  office,  and,  after 
the  manner  of  the  old  days,  his  cap  in  hand, 
asked  "if  massa  could  give  the  old  nigger  a 
dime  ?"  Something  in  my  voice  or  manner  must 
31 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


have  intimated  to  him  that,  like  him,  I  belonged 
to  the  old  order,  as  he  said:  "It's  all  right  for 
some  folks,  dis  thing  they  calls  freedom;  but 
God  knows  I'd  be  glad  to  see  the  old  days  once 
more  before  I  die."  Freedom  to  him,  and  to 
others  like  him,  had  proven  a  cheat  and  a  snare. 
I  have  no  word  of  apology  or  defense  for  slav- 
ery. Long  ago  I  thanked  God  that  it  was  no 
longer  lawful  for  one  human  being  to  hold 
another  in  enforced  servitude.  But  a  genera- 
tion or  more  of  free  negroes  has  been  our  most 
familiar  object-lesson,  and  the  outcome  is  painful 
at  best.  The  negro  who  commands  respect  in 
the  South  to-day,  as  a  rule,  is  the  negro  who  was 
born  and  trained  under  slavery.  The  new  gen- 
eration, those  who  have  known  nothing  but  free- 
dom, it  is  charity  to  say,  are  an  unsatisfactory 
body  of  people  generally.  Whenever  you  find  a 
negro  whose  education  comes  not  from  books 
and  college  only,  but  from  the  example  and  home 
teaching  and  training  of  his  white  master  and 
mistress,  you  will  generally  find  one  who  speaks 
the  truth,  is  honest,  self-respecting  and  self-re- 
straining, docile  and  reverent,  and  always  the 
friend  of  the  Southern  white  gentleman  and  lady. 
32 


CONFEDERATE   MONUMENT. 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


Here  and  there  in  the  homes  of  the  New  South 
these  graduates  from  the  school  of  slavery  are  to 
be  found  in  the  service  of  old  families  and  their 
descendants,  and  the  relationship  is  one  of  pecul- 
iar confidence  and  affection;  and  this  old-time 
darky,  wherever  you  find  him  in  his  integrity, 
pride,  and  industry,  is  in  bold  contrast  with  the 
post-bellum  negro,  despite  his  educational  oppor- 
tunity. Living  as  I  do  in  a  city  famed  for  its  ne- 
gro schools,  I  have  tried  to  observe  fairly,  and  in- 
deed with  strong  predilection  in  their  favor,  the 
processes  and  results  of  negro  education.  Son  of 
an  abolitionist  of  the  Henry  Clay  school,  I  have 
sincerely  wanted  to  see  the  negro  succeed  educa- 
tionally and  take  his  place  with  other  men  in  skill 
and  service.  If  any  city  of  the  South  should  be  the 
first  to  confirm  the  negro's  fitness  for  an  educa- 
tion and  his  increase  in  value  and  in  character 
as  the  subject  of  it,  I  thought  it  but  fair  to  ex- 
pect it  of  a  city  famous  for  its  colored  universi- 
ties. But,  with  honorable  exceptions  to  the  rule, 
the  negro  of  post-bellum  birth  and  education  in 
this  city  is  usually  a  thorn  in  the  flesh  to  one 
who  seeks  or  uses  his  service,  no  matter  what 
that  service  may  be.  "We  don't  have  to  work 
3  33 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


any  more,"  said  one  recently;  "we  are  getting 
educated."  Yet  when  one  of  the  darky  patri- 
archs of  the  Old  South  died  the  other  day,  a  lead- 
ing daily  paper,  in  a  tender  and  beautiful  edi- 
torial, noted  how  this  colored  gentleman  of  the 
old  school,  after  a  long  life  of  honor  and  trust, 
with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  passing 
through  his  hands  as  confidential  messenger,  had 
won  the  respect  of  all  men  by  the  sheer  nobility 
of  his  life. 

Perhaps  the  education  of  hand  and  foot  and 
eye — the  manual  training  schemes  of  Booker 
Washington  and  other  like  negro  educators — 
may  suffice  to  avert  the  degeneracy  of  the  youn- 
ger negro  race.  The  trouble,  however,  is  that 
many  of  these  are  not  enamored  of  hard  work 
and  constant  labor.  They  turn  their  backs  upon 
ax  and  saw  and  plow  which  the  white  man  of- 
fers them  along  with  ample  wages,  and  prefer  the 
negro  barroom  and  the  crap  table.  After  forty 
years  have  gone,  and  millions  of  money  have 
been  expended  by  both  Northern  and  Southern 
whites  in  an  efTort  to  educate  and  train  him  for 
profitable  service,  the  negro  is  found  practically 
in  two  classes — the  larger  class  massed  in  the 
34 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


cities  and  towns,  too  often  despising  and  shirk- 
ing work  except  as  compelled  to  it  by  sheer  ne- 
cessity; the  other  class  consisting  of  those  who 
are  not  ashamed  of  any  kind  of  work  in  field, 
factory,  or  shop,  the  significant  thing  being  that 
those  who  want  work  and  are  doing  it  are  com- 
monly the  negroes  with  little  or  no  education, 
while  those  who  are  shunning  work  are  usually 
of  the  so-called  educated  class. 

I  am  not  surprised  at  the  failure  of  the  negro's 
secular  education  to  make  him  a  good  and  prof- 
itable citizen.  It  is  only  another  illustration  of 
the  folly  of  trying  to  sharpen  the  intellect  and 
leave  untrained  the  heart  and  conscience.  The 
Old  South,  by  contact,  example,  and  precept, 
put  a  conscience  and  a  sense  of  right  and  hon- 
orable living  into  its  slaves.  The  New  South 
is  largely  filling  them  with  books.  The  negro 
of  the  Old  South  was  religious,  genuinely  so, 
though  by  reason  of  his  emotional  nature  his 
religion  was  often  a  matter  of  feeling.  But  such 
religion  as  he  had  he  got  from  white  teachers 
and  preachers,  and  it  was  real  and  scriptural. 
It  bound  him  to  tell  the  truth,  to  lie  not,  to  be 
sober  and  honest,  and  to  do  no  man  wrong. 
35 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


How  well  the  negro  learned  and  practiced  this 
old-fashioned  religion  of  slavery,  let  two  facts 
attest.  First,  few  negroes  thus  trained  in  the 
Old  South,  so  far  as  the  speaker  knows,  have 
suffered  by  rope  or  fagot  for  the  unnamable 
crime  that  so  often  has  marked  the  negro  of 
the  New  South.  If  there  be  exceptions  to  this 
rule,  certainly  they  are  exceedingly  rare.  Sec- 
ondly, at  a  time  when  every  white  man  and  even 
white  boys  were  at  the  front  fighting  the  battles 
of  the  Confederacy,  the  wives  and  mothers  and 
children  of  the  soldiers  were  cared  for  loyally 
and  devotedly  by  the  negro  slaves  to  an  extent 
unmatched  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Such 
was  the  honor  and  conscience  of  the  negro  slaves 
that  they  watched  over  the  helpless  women  and 
children  of  those  who  were  engaged  in  a  conflict 
involving  their  own  slavery. 

What  the  negro  needs  more  than  books  and 
college  curriculum  is  a  conscience.  He  needs 
religion  of  the  genuine,  transforming  kind  that 
will  stop  his  petty  thieving,  his  street  corner 
loafing,  and  his  tendencies  toward  the  barbarism 
from  which  in  the  Old  South  religion  wrested 
his  fathers.  I  think  the  time  has  come  when  our 
36 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


Southern  white  churches  should  turn  again 
toward  the  negro  and  help  him  as  far  as  pos- 
sible to  a  knowledge  of  pure  and  undefiled  reli- 
gion, after  the  example  of  such  ministry  as  that 
of  Capers  and  Andrew  to  the  slaves.  If  I  find 
any  fault  with  ourselves  in  our  relationships 
with  the  negro,  it  is  that  we  too  easily  conceded 
that  the  negro's  moral  and  religious  interests 
should  be  taken  out  of  our  hands  since  the  war 
by  sentimentalists,  or  by  those  whose  labors 
among  the  negroes  were  inspired  by  political 
rather  than  by  genuinely  benevolent  motives. 
Once  politics  is  no  longer  an  ally  to  the  negro, 
and  White  House  favors  are  not  permitted  to 
turn  his  head,  I  have  some  hope  that  the  South- 
ern white  and  the  negro  may  come  together  in 
peace  and  mutual  affection  under  the  power  of 
the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  after  an  alien- 
ation of  more  than  a  generation  may  take  up 
again  the  old  order  of  religious  instruction  and 
training,  which  the  white  fathers  of  the  Old 
South  were  so  zealous  to  give  and  which  the 
black  servants  were  so  eager  to  receive.  When 
a  young  pastor  came  to  me  a  few  weeks  ago 
asking  an  opinion  upon  the  fact  that,  in  response 
37 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


to  a  request  from  a  score  or  more  of  families  of 
negroes  on  his  charge  who  were  without  church 
and  other  religious  facilities,  he  and  his  wife 
had  formed  their  children  into  a  Sunday  school 
and  the  teachers  of  his  white  school  were  giving 
them  faithful  and  intelligent  instruction  every 
Sabbath,  I  saw  in  the  incident  an  intimation  of 
what  the  New  South  must  do  if  it  would  re- 
store the  lost  negro  conscience  of  the  Old  South. 
I  cannot  dismiss  this  passing  glance  at  the 
social  life  of  the  Old  South  without  a  sense  of 
abiding  regret  that  it  is  gone  forever.  My  last 
personal  contact  with  it  was  the  Christmas  just 
preceding  the  war.  Though  the  air  was  thick 
with  rumors  of  impending  strife,  no  gun  as  yet 
had  broken  the  quiet  of  a  land  so  full  of  peace 
and  prosperity.  I  think  the  merriment  of  those 
last  holidays  of  '6i  was  greater  than  ever 
before.  I  recall  it  all  the  more  vividly  because 
it  was  the  last  old-fashioned  Christmas  that 
came  to  my  boyhood,  as  it  was  the  last  that  came 
to  the  Old  South.  For  weeks  preceding  it  ev- 
erything on  the  old  plantation  was  full  of  stir  and 
preparation.  Holly  and  mistletoe  and  cedar 
were  being  put  about  the  rooms  of  the  big  house 
38 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


to  welcome  home  the  boys  and  girls  from  school. 
Secret  councils  were  being  held  as  to  the  Christ- 
mas gifts  that  were  to  be  given  religiously  to 
every  one,  white  and  black.  The  back  yard  was 
piled  up  with  loads  of  oak  and  hickory  to  make 
bright  and  warm  the  Christmas  nights.  The  ne- 
gro seamstresses  were  busy  making  new  suits 
and  dresses  for  all  the  servants.  The  master 
of  the  plantation  was  figuring  up  the  accounts  of 
the  year  and  making  ready  for  generous  drafts 
upon  his  ready  money.  There  was  an  increasing 
rustle  of  excitement  and  happiness  that  ran  from 
the  gray-haired  grandfather  and  mother  down  to 
the  smallest  pickaninny  in  the  remotest  negro 
cabin.  The  peace  and  goodness  of  God  seemed 
to  brood  over  it  all.  The  stately  plantation  home, 
with  its  lofty  white  columns,  its  big  rooms,  its 
great  fireplaces,  opened  wide  to  all  sons  and 
daughters  and  grandchildren,  uncles  and  aunts, 
nephews  and  nieces.  We  poured  into  it;  and  if 
ever  heaven  came  close  to  earth  and  mingled 
with  it,  I  think  it  was  that  Christmas  Eve  when 
the  last  wanderer  and  exile  had  come  and  the 
grace  was  said  at  the  great  table  by  a  gray- 
haired  patriarch  of  the  Old  South.  There  was 
39 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


little  sleep  for  small  boys  and  girls,  and  long  be- 
fore daylight  of  Christmas  shone  in  upon  us 
we  were  scurrying  from  room  to  room  crying, 
"Christmas  gift!"  to  which,  whenever  first  spo- 
ken by  child  or  dependent,  there  could  be  but 
the  one  gracious  response.  Out  on  the  back 
porches  the  negroes  were  waiting  in  grinning 
rows  to  follow  our  example,  and  many  were  the 
dusky  faces  that  beamed  with  delight  over  their 
never-failing  Christmas  remembrances.  Down 
in  the  cabins  and  up  in  the  big  halls  of  the  man- 
sion the  lights  and  fires  burned  the  entire  week, 
and  there  was  nothing  that  could  eat  that  was 
not  surfeited  with  the  world  of  eatables  made 
ready.  I  must  beg  pardon  of  the  W.  C.  T.  U., 
which  had  not  then  begun  its  beneficent  prohib- 
itory career,  if  I  recall  the  big  flowing  bowl  of 
eggnog,  renewed  daily  and  served  generously 
to  all.  I  know  that  this  old-time  Christmas  bev- 
erage is  growing  into  disrepute,  for  which  I 
am  sincerely  glad,  but  I  confess  to  a  sort  of  car- 
nal delight  of  memory  when  I  recall  how  good 
it  tasted  to  the  average  small  boy  on  an  early 
Christmas  morning. 

4o 


JEFFERSON     DAVIS. 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


THE  Old  South  intellectually  was  a  fitting 
complement  to  its  unique  social  system.  The 
charge  has  often  been  made  against  it  that  it  pro- 
duced few  if  any  great  writers  and  left  no  lasting 
impress  upon  the  literature  of  the  times.  -  If  this 
were  true,  it  could  be  answered  that  the  Old 
South  was  true  to  its  distinctive  mission.  It 
needed  to  produce  great  thinkers,  and  it  produced 
them,  as  the  half-century  of  its  dominating  lead- 
ership attests.  An  Elizabethan  age,  with  its  co- 
terie of  great  writers,  comes  to  any  nation  only 
at  long  intervals,  and  under  conditions  which 
are  of  providential  rather  than  of  human  order- 
ing. The  Southern  man,  by  tradition,  inherit- 
ance, and  choice,  and  by  virtue  of  a  certain 
philosophic  temper  which  seemed  to  inhere  in 
his  race,  was  trained  to  think  and  to  speak  clear- 
ly, and  especially  upon  grave  matters  of  public 
import.  He  was  a  born  politician  in  the  best 
sense  of  that  much-abused  term.  Like  Hanni- 
bal, he  was  led  early  in  life  to  the  altars  of  his 
country  and  dedicated  to  its  service.  He  cov- 
eted the  power  and  the  authority  of  the  rostrum 
rather  than  the  pen.  In  the  beauty  of  field  and 
forest,  of  bright  stream  and  blossoming  flower, 
41 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


of  song  and  sunshine,  or  in  the  historic  inci- 
dents of  the  Old  South,  he  had  ample  inspira- 
tion and  material  for  his  pen,  if  he  had  cared 
to  use  it.  But  it  was  ever  his  ambition  and  de- 
light to  stand  before  his  countrymen  on  some 
great  public  day,  and  set  forth  the  length  and 
breadth  of  some  great  argument,  patiently  stud- 
ied and  thought  out  in  his  library  and  now  made 
luminous  and  inspiring  to  the  listening  multi- 
tude. If  it  were  true  that  the  South  had  no 
great  writers,  I  could  even  content  myself  by 
recalling  how,  when  one  of  its  brilliant  thinkers 
and  orators  cast  his  spell  upon  the  culture  of 
old  Boston,  the  finest  editorial  writer  of  that 
city  of  writers  placed  over  his  leading  editorial 
the  next  morning  the  question,  "What  could  be 
finer?" 

While  it  was  true  of  the  Old  South  that  mem- 
bers of  its  learned  professions  commonly  dallied 
with  the  Muses,  there  was  no  distinctive  profes- 
sion of  letters.  The  professional  poet,  histo- 
rian, and  maker  of  fiction,  and  publisher  and  sell- 
er of  books,  were  scarcely  known.  A  rural  peo- 
ple, a  relatively  sparse  population  of  readers, 
the  absence  of  great  cities,  the  concentration  of 
42 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


thought  and  learning  upon  politics  and  plans  of 
government,  the  entire  lack  of  commercialism 
as  a  motive  to  literary  production,  were  reasons 
why  the  Old  South  contributed  comparatively 
little  per  se  to  the  stock  of  permanent  literature. 
There  was  another  hindrance  in  the  fact,  which 
I  do  not  like  to  recall,  that  the  South,  in  mis- 
taken largeness  of  heart  or  short-sightedness  of 
vision,  fell  upon  two  ways  that  lowered  its  own 
self-respect  and  dwarfed  the  good  it  might  have 
attained.  It  set  up  a  fashion,  on  the  one  hand,  of 
reading  and  patronizing  alien  books,  and  ac- 
counted these  foreign  literary  products  as  better 
than  its  own.  And  along  with  this  same  mis- 
taken fondness  for  foreign  literary  wares,  it  be- 
gan to  slight  its  own  struggling  colleges  and 
schools,  and  to  send  its  sons  and  daughters  else- 
where for  a  culture  not  superior  to  that  pro- 
curable at  its  own  doors. 

Yet  with  such  admitted  weaknesses,  let  no  one 
suppose  for  an  instant  that  the  ability  to  write  or 
think  or  speak  worthy  of  the  finest  culture  was 
in  any  wise  wanting  to  the  gentleman  of  the  Old 
South.  Enter  his  library,  and  you  would  find 
what  is  becoming  rare  in  the  New  South,  but 
43 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


which  was  the  mark  of  the  gentleman  of  the  Old 
South — the  finest  and  completest  array  of  costly 
books  upon  all  subjects,  ranging  through  science, 
art,  literature,  theology,  biography,  history,  and 
politics.  Nothing  that  money  could  buy  or 
trained  scholarship  select  was  omitted.  A  man's 
books  were  his  most  intimate  friends  and  com- 
rades, and  such  was  the  wide  range  and  patient 
study  of  the  average  gentleman  of  the  Old  South 
that  wits  and  savants  vied  in  paying  tribute  to 
his  varied  and  scholarly  attainments.  In  sin- 
gular contrast,  the  other  day  one  of  our  literary 
leaders,  discussing  the  scanty  sale  of  really  val- 
uable books,  bemoaned  the  fact  that  the  South- 
ern gentleman's  library  is  fast  becoming  extinct. 
One  feature  of  scholarship  that  was  peculiar  to 
the  Old  South  was  the  general  and  thorough 
devotion  to,  and  mastery  of,  the  classics.  I 
doubt  if  ever  the  youth  of  any  country  were  so 
well  grounded  in  the  literature  of  Greek  and 
Latin  poet  and  historian,  or  caught  so  fully  and 
finely  the  beauty  of  the  old  philosophies  and 
mythologies.  It  was  not  an  uncommon  feat  for 
a  boy  of  fourteen,  upon  entrance  as  a  freshman 
to  a  college  of  the  old  order,  to  read  Virgil  and 
44 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


Horace  ore  rotundo,  with  a  grace  and  finish  that 
would  do  credit  to  a  post-bellum  alumnus.  Lat- 
in, Greek,  and  the  higher  mathematics,  with  a 
modicum  of  the  physical  sciences,  constituted  the 
favored  curriculum  of  the  old-time  academy  and 
college.  How  much  some  of  us  owe  to  that  an- 
cient academy  and  that  small  college  can  never 
be  rightly  estimated.  The  standard  of  study 
was  severe  and  thorough.  The  discipline  was 
often  rigorous  and  exacting.  What,  for  instance, 
would  our  latter-day  college  boys  think  of 
a  rule  compelling  their  attendance,  if  within  a 
mile  of  the  chapel,  upon  sunrise  prayer  the  year 
round?  Or  how  would  a  shudder  run  through 
their  ranks  if  I  paused  to  tell  them  of  how  in  our 
old  Academy  two  score  of  us  classical  students, 
ranging  in  age  from  fifteen  to  thirty  years,  hav- 
ing been  discovered  demolishing  the  business 
signs  of  town  merchants  in  an  effort  to  fulfill 
the  Scriptures  which  declared  that  they  should 
seek  a  sign  and  none  should  be  given  unto  them, 
were  soundly  thrashed  with  exceeding  rough- 
ness and  dispatch  by  the  man  who  for  many 
years  has  held  the  superintendency  of  public 
schools  in  the  foremost  city  of  the  South !  Alas 
45 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


for  the  disappearance  of  those  good  old  days 
and  customs,  of  which  the  survivors  have  feeling 
and  pathetic  remembrance !  For  one,  I  am  glad 
that  free  public  education  has  come  to  the  chil- 
dren, white  and  black,  of  the  New  South. 
Whether  the  hopes  of  the  statesman  and  philan- 
thropist shall  be  realized  or  not,  I  am  also  glad 
of  the  millions  of  money  the  New  South  has 
expended  in  the  past  generation  upon  the  educa- 
tion of  the  masses.  But  the  day  of  the  ancient 
academy  and  college,  as  source  and  inspiration  of 
an  incomparable  culture,  will  never  be  surpassed 
by  latter-day  educational  systems,  however  wide- 
ly extended  and  beneficent  these  may  be.  There 
was  something  intensely  stimulating  in  the  spirit 
and  method  of  the  old  classical  school;  a  sharp 
yet  generous  competition  and  rivalry  of  scholar- 
ship ;  a  thoroughness  that  reached  the  foundation 
of  every  subject  traversed;  and  above  and 
through  it  all  there  was  the  sure  development 
of  a  sense  of  honor  and  a  pride  of  scholarship 
that  lifted  even  the  dull  student  into  an  ambi- 
tion to  succeed.  Mixed  with  all  was  the  exam- 
ple and  influence  of  high-bred  Christian  gentle- 
men as  professors  and  teachers,  whose  lives  re- 
46 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


enforced  their  teachings  and  molded  us  into  the 
image  of  the  gentleman  of  the  Old  South.  The 
utilitarian  in  education  was  not  yet  in  evidence. 
The  bread-and-butter  argument  was  reserved  to 
a  later  generation.  The  cheap  and  tawdry  "busi- 
ness college,"  recruited  from  guileless  country 
youth  ambitious  to  become  merchant  princes  and 
railroad  managers  by  a  six  months'  course  in 
double  entry  and  lightning  arithmetic,  had  not 
then  entered  upon  its  dazzling  career.  Boys 
were  trained  to  read  extensively,  to  think  clear- 
ly, to  analyze  patiently,  to  judge  critically,  to 
debate  accurately  and  fluently,  and  in  short  to 
master  whatever  subject  one  might  come  upon. 
Over  that  old-time  educational  method  might 
be  written  the  aphorism  of  Quintilian,  that  "not 
what  one  may  remember  constitutes  knowledge, 
but  what  one  cannot  forget." 


WE  were  not  without  noble  intellectual  ex- 
emplars in  our  Old  South.  The  great 
thoughts  of  our  home-born  leaders,  from  Patrick 
Henry  to  Calhoun  and  Clay,  were  ever  before  us. 

47 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


Our  college  debates,  our  commencement  orations, 
were  fashioned  after  the  severely  classical  mod- 
els these  men  had  left  us.  From  the  rostrum, 
the  party  platform,  the  pulpit,  whenever  a  man 
spoke  in  those  days  it  was  expected  and  de- 
manded that  his  speech  be  chaste,  his  thought 
elevated,  his  purpose  ennobling.  We  were  old- 
fashioned,  I  admit,  in  theme  and  method.  We 
did  not  aim  so  much  to  please  and  entertain  as 
to  convince  and  inspire.  The  forum  was  as  sa- 
cred as  in  the  palmiest  days  of  Athens  and  De- 
mosthenes. About  it  centered  our  chief  ambi* 
tions.  We  had  not  come  upon  a  degenerate  age 
when  a  much-exploited  college  graduate,  lyceum 
lecturer,  and  "D.D." — as  I  heard  him  before  a 
great  audience  of  university  young  gentlemen  and 
ladies  the  other  day — could  descend  to  a  con- 
temptible buffoonery  of  delineation  of  the  "Amer- 
ican Girl"  as  his  theme,  and  include  in  his  printed 
repertoire  such  subjects  as  "The  Tune  the  Old 
Cow  Died  of,"  which  confirmed  some  of  us  who 
heard  him  in  the  conviction  that  Balaam's  ass  is 
yet  lineally  represented  in  ways  of  public  speech 
and  action. 

Of  the  great  writers  and  orators  who  left  their 


48 


ALEXANDER    H.    STEPHENS. 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


impress  upon  us  in  the  last  years  of  the  Old 
South,  I  can  speak  from  personal  contact  and  ex- 
perience, and  with  thankfulness  that  as  a  boy  I 
was  given  to  see  most  of  them  face  to  face  and 
to  touch,  in  spirit,  the  hem  of  their  garments. 
The  spell  of  the  genius  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
though  the  fitful  fever  of  his  life  had  ended,  was 
upon  the  literature  and  literary  men  of  the  time. 
The  weird  beauty  of  the  lines  of  this  prince  of 
the  powers  of  harmony,  contrasting  so  wonder- 
fully with  a  strange  analytical  power  that  made 
him  at  once  a  foremost  prose  and  poetical  writer 
of  his  century,  had  set  before  us  the  measure  of 
beauty  and  the  test  of  genius.  Then,  in  our  own 
day,  came  Paul  Hamilton  Hayne,  Henry  Timrod, 
and  Sidney  Lanier.  I  cannot  describe  to  you  the 
feeling  of  ownership  that  we  of  the  Old  South 
felt  in  this  trinity  of  noble  singers;  nor  can  I 
express  the  sense  of  tenderness  that  comes  to  me 
as  I  recall  the  pain  and  poverty  that  haunted 
them  most  of  their  days  until  the  end  came,  to 
two  of  them  at  least,  in  utter  .destitution.  It  was 
my  privilege  early  in  life  to  fall  under  the  spell 
of  the  minstrelsy  of  these  three  men.  As  long 
as  the  red  hills  of  Georgia  stand,  and  its  over- 
4  49 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


hanging  pines  are  stirred  by  the  south  wind's 
sighing,  let  it  recall  to  the  honorable  and  grate- 
ful remembrance  of  Georgians  the  gentle  yet 
proud-spirited  poet  who,  having  lost  all  but  hon- 
or and  genius  in  his  native  sea-girt  city,  came  to 
his  rude  cabin  home  at  Copse  Hill  as  the  weary 
pilgrim  of  whom  he  so  tenderly  sings : 

With  broken  staff  and  tattered  shoon, 
I  wander  slow  from  dawn  to  noon — 
From  arid  noon  till,  dew-impearled, 
Pale  twilight  steals  across  the  world. 
Yet  sometimes  through  dim  evening  calms 
I   catch  the  gleam  of  distant  palms; 
And  hear,  far  off,  a  mystic  sea, 
Divine  as  waves  on  Galilee. 
Perchance  through  paths  unknown,  forlorn, 
I  still  may  reach  an  Orient  morn; 
To  rest  where  Easter  breezes  stir 
Around  the  sacred  sepulcher. 

I  know  what  a  fashion  it  is  to  worship  at  the 
shrines  of  the  "Lake  poets,"  and  how  Words- 
worth and  Burns  and  Shelley  and  like  singers 
of  the  Old  World,  with  Longfellow,  Whittier,  and 
Lowell  of  the  New,  are  set  on  high  as  the  greater 
masters  of  poesy.  But  if  genius  is  a  thing  of 
quality  rather  than  quantity,  I  go  back  to  the 
50 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


dark  days  and  memories  of  battle  and  take  my 
stand  lovingly  beside  the  new-made  grave  of 
Timrod,  the  poet  laureate  of  the  Confederacy, 
and  call  to  mind  what  I  believe  to  be  a  poem 
that  the  greatest  of  English  and  American  poets 
would  be  glad  to  claim  as  their  own.  Remem- 
ber, as  you  read  it,  how  in  his  dire  want  the 
poet  wrote  of  the  little  book  of  which  it  is  a 
part:  "I  would  consign  every  line  of  it  to  ob- 
livion for  one  hundred  dollars  in  hand." 

Spring,  with  that  nameless  pathos  in  the  air 

Which  dwells  with  all  things  fair; 
Spring,  with  her  golden  suns  and  silver  rains, 

Is  with  us  once  again. 

Still  there's  a  sense  of  blossoms  yet  unborn 

In  the  sweet  airs  of  morn ; 
One  almost  looks  to  see  the  very  street 

Grow  purple  at  his  feet. 
At  times  a  fragrant  breeze  comes  floating  by, 

And  brings — you  know  not  why — 
A  feeling  as  when  eager  crowds  await 

Before  a  palace  gate 
Some  wondrous  pageant;  and  you  scarce  would  start, 

If  from  a  beech's  heart 
A  blue-eyed  Dryad,  stepping  forth,  should  say: 

"Behold  me!     I  am  May!" 

5i 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


Sidney  Lanier  was  of  the  Old  South,  though 
fame  came  to  him  from  the  New.  It  was  fitting 
that  the  latest  of  the  progeny  of  genius  of  the 
Old  South  should  become  the  foremost  of  those 
who  were  to  gild  it  with  a  fame  imperishable. 
Born  in  Georgia,  less  than  a  score  of  years  be- 
fore the  tragedy  of  the  Old  South  began,  writ- 
ing his  earliest  poems  as  a  boy  in  Confederate 
camp  and  Federal  prison,  his  music  tinged  with 
the  somberness  of  the  time,  Lanier's  genius  was 
like  the  last  of  the  Southern  flowers  that  burst 
into  bloom  just  before  the  coming  of  chilling 
frost  and  wintry  wind.  It  was  like  the  bright- 
red  flower  of  war  which  he  describes :  "The  early 
spring  of  1861  brought  to  bloom,  besides  innu- 
merable violets  and  jessamines,  a  strange,  enor- 
mous, and  terrible  flower,  the  blood-red  flower  of 
war,  which  grows  amid  the  thunders."  Why  it  is 
that  the  price  of  genius  must  always  be  paid  in 
blood,  I  do  not  know ;  but  not  all  the  transmitted 
genius  and  culture  and  spirit  of  the  Old  South, 
which  crystallized  in  this  last  and  greatest  of  her 
literary  children,  could  absolve  Lanier  from  the 
pangs  which  Southern  genius  seems  peculiarly 
called  upon  to  suffer.  As  the  holiest  and  brav- 
52 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


est  lives  spring  out  of  darkness  and  storm  and 
sorrow,  it  may  be  that  only  such  baptism  of  tears 
and  blood  which  we  as  a  people  have  received 
could  fit  our  sons  and  daughters  for  their  high 
vocation. 

Lanier  was  easily  the  greatest  of  the  poets  of 
the  South.  Perhaps  his  final  place  is  yet  to  be 
fixed  among  the  greater  singers  of  America,  but 
it  is  comforting  to  know  that  the  clear  light  of 
dispassionate  judgment  of  the  receding  years  dis- 
pels the  first- formed  prejudices,  and  lifts  the 
singer  into  nobler  and  yet  nobler  place. 

Broken  with  pain  and  poverty,  yearning  un- 
utterably for  the  peace  and  quiet  of  an  oppor- 
tunity to  pour  out  his  divine  genius  in  great  and 
holy  song,  could  anything  be  more  utterly  pitiful 
than  this  passionate  cry  for  help,  which  lay 
among  his  papers  after  his  death  ? 

0  Lord,  if  thou  wert  needy  as  I, 

If  thou  shouldst  come  to  my  door  as  I  to  thine; 

If  thou  hungered  so  much  as  I 

For  that  which  belongs  to  the  spirit, 

For  that  which  is  fine  and  good, 

Ah,  friend,  for  that  which  is  fine  and  good, 

1  would  give  it  to  thee  if  I  had  power. 

"A  thousand  songs  are  singing  in  my  heart,"  he 
53 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


declares,  "that  will  certainly  kill  me  if  I  do  not 
utter  them  soon." 

Lanier's  genius  was  many-sided,  and  there  is 
not  a  line  he  wrote  of  poetry  or  prose  that  one 
would  care  to  blot.  He  had  the  exquisite  sense 
of  melody  of  Poe,  but  he  had  what  Poe  did  not 
in  the  spirit  of  the  maxim  of  his  art  which  he 
often  expressed  in  the  words:  "The  beauty  of 
holiness  and  the  holiness  of  beauty."  He  had, 
too,  the  tenderness  and  pathos  and  lyrical  beauty 
of  Timrod  and  Haynes,  yet  the  characteristic  of 
his  poems  is  that  they  call  one  to  worship  God. 
They  usher  us  with  bowed  head  and  chastened 
spirit  into  the  holy  of  holies.  "A  holy  tune  was 
in  my  soul  when  I  fell  asleep,"  he  writes ;  "it  was 
going  when  I  awoke." 

Just  as  in  the  ancient  mythology,  while  one  of 
divine  descent  might  hold  converse  for  a  time 
with  sons  and  daughters  of  men  unmarked  or 
unrecognized,  yet  by  glance  of  eye  or  grace  of 
motion  would  inevitably  betray  himself  as  of 
the  progeny  of  the  gods,  so  if  ever  for  a  mo- 
ment I  were  in  doubt  as  to  the  genius  of  Lanier 
my  doubt  would  vanish  as  in  the  darkness,  with 
bowed  head  and  pitying  heart  of  love,  I  sang 
54 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


to   myself   his    "Ballad   of   the    Trees    and   the 
Master:" 

Into  the  woods  my  Master  went, 
Clean  forspent,  forspent. 

Into  the  woods  my  Master  came, 

Forspent  with  love  and  shame. 
But  the  olives  they  were  not  blind  to  him, 
The  little  gray  leaves  were  kind  to  him, 
The  thorn  tree  had  a  mind  to  him, 

When  into  the  woods  he  came. 

Out  of  the  woods  my  Master  went, 
And  he  was  well  content. 

Out  of  the  woods  my  Master  came, 

Content  with  death  and  shame. 
When  death  and  shame  would  woo  him  last, 
From  under  the  trees  they  drew  him — last ; 
'Twas  on  a  tree  they  slew  him — last, 

When  out  of  the  woods  he  came. 


ONE  of  the  aphorisms  of  my  youth  was, 
"Poeta  nascitur,  orator  fit."  That  the  poet 
is  "born,"  and  ever  bears  upon  himself  the  marks 
of  his  divine  enduement,  I  do  not  doubt;  but  that 
the  orator  "becomes"  or  happens  so  by  chance  or 
labor,  I  must  strongly  deny.  A  certain  fluency 
55 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


of  speech,  a  certain  gloss  of  oratory,  may  possi- 
bly be  achieved  by  dint  of  elocutionary  drill  and 
practice.  If  one  is  minded,  like  orators  of  an 
elegant  postprandial  type,  to  stand  before  a 
mirror  and  practice  the  tricks  of  gesture  and 
speech,  he  may  hope  to  attain  applause  from 
those  whose  blood  is  kept  well  cooled  by  the  ices 
of  the  banquet  room.  I  have  described  it  fitting- 
ly as  "postprandial"  oratory,  for  the  reason  that 
it  is  most  appreciated  when  the  stomach  and  not 
the  brain  is  chiefly  in  operation. 

But  if  any  one  as  a  boy  had  ever  sat  under 
the  matchless  spell  of  the  real  masters  of  the 
forum,  those  who  were  as  fully  "born"  unto  it 
as  was  Lanier  to  poetry  or  Blind  Tom  to  music ; 
if  within  a  half  score  of  years  he  had  been  per- 
mitted to  hear  in  their  prime  Jefferson  Davis, 
Robert  Toombs,  Ben  Hill,  Alexander  Stephens, 
Judge  Lamar,  and  William  L.  Yancey,  the  after- 
dinner  elegancies  of  oratory  of  the  class  I  have 
named  would  be  tame  and  dispiriting.  I  would 
not  underrate  the  men  of  later  fame,  but  I  am 
sure  that  it  is  not  time  and  distance  only  that 
lend  enchantment  to  the  names  of  that  galaxy 
of  famous  orators  who  closed  the  succession 
56 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


of  platform  princes  of  the  Old  South.  I  would 
not  detract  an  iota  from  whatever  claim  the  New 
South  may  have  to  oratory,  but  I  stand  firmly 
upon  the  proposition,  self-evident  to  survivors  of 
the  Old  South,  that  the  golden  age  of  Southern 
oratory  ended  a  generation  ago.  Compared  with 
Yancey,  the  incarnate  genius  of  oratory,  any 
oration  of  that  superb  master  of  assemblies  by 
the  side  of  the  best  post-bellum  oratory  (always 
excepting  Henry  W.  Grady)  is  as  Hyperion  to 
a  satyr. 

On  a  day  that  no  one  who  was  present  will 
ever  forget,  while  the  war  clouds  were  gathering 
and  old  political  issues  were  giving  place  to  the 
one  dominant  and  terrible  question  of  the  hour, 
in  a  little  Southern  city,  within  the  compass  of 
twelve  hours  I  heard  the  greatest  of  the  orators 
of  the  last  tragic  era  of  the  Old  South.  Whig 
and  Democrat  were  words  to  conjure  with,  and 
the  old-fashioned  custom  of  joint  debate  was  yet 
in  honor.  The  crux  of  an  intense  and  hard- 
fought  campaign  was  at  hand,  and  only  the  plat- 
form giants  of  the  contending  parties  were  in 
demand  for  the  occasion.  From  fifty  to  a  hun- 
dred miles  around,  towns,  without  railroad  com- 
57 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


munication  as  now,  poured  their  delegations  in 
upon  the  crucial  day  of  the  campaign.  For  two 
days  and  nights  in  advance,  processions  with 
fife  and  drum  and  bands,  cannon  and  cavalry,  had 
held  rival  parade.  The  fires  of  a  great  barbecue, 
with  its  long  lines  of  parallel  trenches  in  which, 
under  the  unbroken  vigilance  of  expert  negro 
cooks,  whole  beeves  and  sheep  and  hogs  and  in- 
numerable turkeys  were  roasting,  sent  forth  a 
savor  that  would  have  tempted  the  dainty  palate 
of  an  Epicurus.  Floats  were  formed,  and  fair 
young  women  and  rosy-cheeked  children  ex- 
pressed in  symbol  the  doctrines  of  their  sires,  and 
sang  to  us  until  our  hearts  were  all  aglow.  To 
the  small  boy  there  were  meat  and  drink,  sights 
and  sounds  illimitable,  and  a  tenseness  of  ex- 
citement that  thrilled  him  with  a  thousand  thrills, 
for  in  the  presence  and  sound  of  the  great  men 
of  his  country  the  boy's  heart  must  expand  and 
his  ambition  take  fire. 

Not  in  a  hundred  years  could  I  forget  the 
speeches  and  speakers  of  that  eventful  day. 
Whole  passages  linger  in  memory  now,  fifty  years 
after  they  were  spoken.  I  recall  the  jubilant 
ring  of  Ben  Hill  as,  lifting  an  old  placard  on 
58 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


which  was  inscribed,  "Buck,  Breck,  and  Kan- 
sas," he  said :  "You  got  your  Buck,  you  got  your 
Breck,  but  where' s  your  Kansas?"  Or  Brown- 
low,  with  the  heavy  thump  of  his  fist  on  the 
table,  declaring,  "I  would  rather  vote  for  the 
old  clothes  of  Henry  Clay,  stuffed  with  straw, 
than  for  any  man  living."  Or  Toombs,  with 
massive  head  and  lordly  pose,  denouncing  in 
blistering  speech  the  unholy  alliance  of  certain 
men  of  the  Old  South  with  the  enemies  of  its 
most  vital  institution.  Or  Stephens,  small  and 
weazened,  sallow  and  unkempt,  with  cigar  stump 
in  hand,  his  thin,  metallic  voice  penetrating  with 
strange  power  to  the  remotest  part  of  the  great 
open-air  assemblage.  All  day,  back  and  forth, 
the  battle  of  the  giants  raged.  Toward  nightfall 
the  Democrats  were  in  dire  distress  over  the 
seeming  victory  of  the  opposition.  Yancey  lay 
sick  at  home,  sixty  miles  away,  and  the  wires 
were  kept  hot  with  pleadings  to  bring  him  at  any 
cost,  if  possible,  to  the  scene.  At  nine  o'clock 
that  night  I  saw  a  strange  tribute  to  the  power 
of  that  orator,  who,  I  doubt  not,  will  stand  un- 
rivaled in  the  future  as  in  the  past.  Pale  and 
emaciated,  taken  from  his  sick  room  and  hur- 
59 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


ried  by  special  train,  upborne  upon  the  shoulders 
of  men  whose  idol  he  had  been  for  twenty  years, 
he  was  carried  to  the  platform  at  the  close  of 
a  day's  great  victory  by  the  opposing  party. 
With  singularly  musical  voice  and  an  indefinable 
magnetism  which  fell  upon  all  of  us,  he  began 
a  speech  of  two  hours'  length.  Within  an  hour, 
such  was  the  magic  of  the  man,  he  had  turned 
the  tide  of  defeat,  rallied  his  party,  and  filled 
them  with  hope  and  courage.  Within  another 
hour  he  was  receiving  the  tremendous  applause 
of  even  his  political  enemies,  and  had  undone 
all  the  mighty  work  of  the  giants  of  the  opposi- 
tion and  sent  them  home  with  a  chill  at  heart. 

With  such  political  leaders  as  these  men,  and 
with  the  finest  intellect  and  character  of  the  Old 
South  devoted  for  generations  to  the  study  and 
exposition  of  the  purest  party  politics,  I  am  not 
surprised  at  the  higher  level  of  parties  and  plat- 
forms of  the  Old  South.  Politics  was  not  a 
"graft,"  as  the  present-day  political  ringster  de- 
fines it.  The  political  and  personal  conscience 
were  one  and  the  same,  and  a  man's  politics  was 
no  small  part  of  his  religion.  I  am  not  say- 
ing that  all  political  leaders  were  incorrupt- 
60 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


ible  statesmen,  or  that  an  unselfish  patriot- 
ism was  the  invariable  mark  of  its  party  politics. 
The  demagogue  was  not  unknown,  and  the  fine 
Italian  hand  of  the  mercenary  was  sometimes  in 
evidence.  But  of  one  fact  I  am  abundantly  as- 
sured— the  spoilsman  and  the  grafter  held  no 
recognized  and  official  standing  in  that  old- 
time  democracy.  Men  of  ability  and  character 
might  aspire  to  political  place  and  honor.  They 
might  even  go  beyond  the  personal  desire  and 
become  open  candidates  for  party  favor.  But 
the  service  of  the  paid  political  manager,  the 
conciliation  of  the  party  "boss,"  the  subsidizing 
of  the  party  "heelers,"  the  utilization  of  the  party 
press  in  flaming,  self-laudatory  columns  and  even 
pages  of  paid  advertising  matter,  ad  nauseam  and 
ad  infinitum,  as  in  recent  Southern  political  con- 
tests— all  these  latter-day  importations  and  in- 
ventions of  "peanut"  politics  would  have  merited 
and  received  the  unmeasured  contempt  of  the 
politicians  of  the  Old  South.  There  were  cer- 
tain old-fashioned  political  maxims  that  consti- 
tuted the  code  of  every  man  who  would  become 
a  candidate  for  office,  as,  for  instance,  "The  of- 
fice should  seek  the  man,  not  the  man  the  office." 
61 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


I  cannot  find  heart  to  censure  the  politician  of  the 
New  South  for  his  smile  at  the  verdancy  and 
guilelessness  of  such  a  maxim,  but  that  which 
provokes  a  smile  was  in  my  own  remembered 
years  the  working  motto  of  the  old-time  South- 
ern leaders  of  high  rank.  Another  maxim  was 
that  "the  patriot  may  impoverish  but  not  enrich 
himself  by  office-holding."  As  a  commentary 
upon  this  maxim,  it  affords  me  infinite  satisfac- 
tion, in  a  retrospect  of  the  long  line  of  men  who 
led  the  great  political  campaigns  of  the  Old 
South  and  held  its  positions  of  highest  trust,  that 
most  of  them  died  poor,  that  none  of  them  with- 
in my  knowledge  were  charged  with  converting 
public  office  into  private  gain,  and  that  the  high- 
est ambition  of  the  old-time  politician  was  to 
serve  his  country  by  some  great  deed  of  unselfish 
patriotism,  to  live  like  a  gentleman,  and  then  to 
die  with  uncorrupted  heart  and  hands,  and  with 
money  enough  to  insure  a  decent  burial.  If  he 
left  a  few  debts  here  and  there,  they  were  grate- 
fully cherished  as  souvenirs  by  his  host  of  friends. 
Earlier  in  these  pages  I  raised  the  question 
as  to  why  the  South,  once  so  potent  in  national 
council  and  leadership,  was  now  become  the 
62 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


mere  servant  of  the  national  Democratic  party, 
so  much  so  that  the  recognized  Sir  Oracle  of 
Republicanism  and  mouthpiece  of  his  excellency 
the  President  is  led  to  remind  us,  while  a  guest 
on  Southern  soil,  of  our  pristine  place  and  pow- 
er, and  to  admonish  us,  in  the  frankness  of  an 
open  and  worthy  foeman,  to  quit  playing  the 
role  of  lackey  in  national  politics,  and  to  put 
forth  as  of  yore  our  own  home-grown  statesmen 
for  national  positions  of  highest  honor  and  serv- 
ice, and  to  do  all  in  our  might  again  to  restore 
the  lost  political  prestige  of  the  South.  Come 
from  whomsoever  it  may,  Republican  or  Dem- 
ocrat, Grosvenor  or  Grant: — for  the  latter  before 
his  death  held  like  view  with  the  former — the 
advice  is  well  given  and  the  point  well  taken. 
But  when  once  the  renaissance  begins,  I  think 
the  Augean  stable  of  latter-day  politics,  even  in 
the  New  South,  will  need  another  Hercules  to 
purify  it.  Take,  for  instance,  this  statement  from 
a  recent  issue  of  a  great  Southern  newspaper: 
"The  four  candidates  for  railroad  commissioner 
expended  a  total  of  $14,940.80  on  their  cam- 
paign expenses,  Mr.  ,  who  was  nominated, 

leading  with  $10,522.80.     The  twelve  candidates 
63 


THE     OLD     SOUTH 


for  the  Supreme  Court  paid  out  $7,133.34.     Six- 
teen   Congressional    candidates    expended    $15,- 

965.88." 

In  the  Independent  of  recent  date  a  leading 
Democratic  manufacturer  of  New  Jersey,  under 
manifestly  strong  grievance,  recites  his  experi- 
ences as  a  delegate  in  the  State  Democratic 
Convention,  in  which  a  vigorous  effort  was  made, 
as  in  other  Democratic  Conventions,  to  force 
the  indorsement  of  an  unclean  aspirant  to  the 
highest  office  of  the  republic.  The  article  I  cite 
is  an  evident  instance  of  pot  and  kettle,  but  it 
sets  in  bold  relief  the  straits  and  methods  to 
which  the  dominating  wing  of  the  party  of  Jef- 
ferson and  Jackson  has  been  reduced,  certainly 
in  some  of  the  Northern  if  not  of  the  Southern 
States.  I  quote  the  closing  paragraph  of  the 
article  as  a  faithful  picture  of  recent  political 
happenings : 

What  are  the  means  used  by  the  bosses?  First, 
corrupted  judges  at  the  primaries  and  bulldozing  tac- 
tics there.  Secondly,  a  brow-beating  county  and  del- 
egation chairman,  with  his  attendant  thugs.  Thirdly, 
a  properly  managed  credentials  committee,  with  ar- 
rangements made  beforehand,  so  that  there  will  be  con- 
64 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


tests  and  the  contests  decided  their  way.  Fourthly,  a 
tactful  chairman,  who  will  have  fine  presence,  be 
a  hypocrite  and  pretend  to  fairness,  but  never  recog- 
nize any  but  machine  men.  Fifthly,  the  presence 
of  the  boss,  with  his  ever-ready  check  book  and  a  fine 
knowledge  of  men  to  know  what  he  must  do  to  win 
his  way  with  them. 

In  so  far  as  this  is  a  true  picture  of  the  dom- 
inant spirit  and  method  of  no  small  part  of  the 
Northern  Democracy,  and  I  firmly  believe  it  so  to 
be,  I  think  it  time  for  the  South  to  first  purge  it- 
self of  the  contamination  that  has  come  from 
thirty  years  of  subserviency  and  emasculation, 
and  then  to  assert  and  maintain  the  integrity  and 
high  principles  of  the  Democracy  of  the  fathers. 
If  ever  thieves  and  money  changers  wefre 
scourged  from  the  ancient  temple,  it  is  high  time 
that  the  lash  of  public  scorn  shall  be  laid  upon 
the  backs  of  all  men,  North  or  South,  who  have 
helped  to  disrupt  and  dishonor  a  once  noble  and 
victorious  national  party.  When  I  remember,  as 
a  Confederate  soldier,  that  William  McKinley — 
peace  to  his  dust — in  the  city  of  Atlanta,  as  Re- 
publican President,  pleaded  for  equal  recogni- 
tion of  Confederate  with  Federal  dead;  and  that 
5  65 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


one  who  has  been  honored  by  the  Democratic 
party  as  standard  bearer  and  occupant  of  a  great 
office  declined  to  vote  for  an  ex-Confederate 
candidate  in  fear  of  the  disfavor  of  his  Western 
constituency ;  and  when  within  recent  months,  in 
great  cities  of  the  South,  I  have  personally  seen 
the  cunning  handiwork  of  paid  henchmen  of  a 
millionaire  saffron  newsmonger  seeking  most  in- 
sistently and  offensively  to  buy  exalted  position 
for  their  master,  I  am  ready  once  more  to  secede, 
except  that  the  second  act  of  secession  would  be 
the  sundering  of  all  bonds  that  bind  my  party  to 
corrupting  methods  and  leadership,  and  the  set- 
ting up  again  in  the  New  South  of  the  lofty 
political  ideals  and  independency  of  the  Democ- 
racy of  the  Old  South. 


THUS  far  I  have  tried  to  portray,  in  frankly 
admitted  partiality,  the  social,  intellectual, 
and  political  characteristics  of  the  Old  South. 
But  I  should  be  seriously  derelict  in  my  portrait- 
ure if  I  left  unnoted  that  which  was  more  to  it 
than  wealth  or  culture  or  learning  or  party.  If  the 
66 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


Old  South  had  one  characteristic  more  than  an- 
other, I  think  it  was  the  reverent  and  religious 
life  and  atmosphere  which  diffused  themselves 
among  all  classes  of  its  people,  whether  cracker 
white  or  plantation  prince  or  dusky  slave.  If 
I  were  asked  to  explain  this  atmosphere  of  re- 
ligion, I  should  hardly  know  where  to  begin. 
Perhaps  its  largely  rural  population  and  its 
peaceful  agricultural  pursuits  predisposed  to  re- 
ligion the  simple-minded  people  who  made  up 
the  Old  South.  More  than  this,  however,  must 
have  been  due  to  the  religious  strain  in  the  blood 
of  the  Cavalier,  Huguenot,  and  God-fearing 
Scotch-Irish  ancestry  from  which  they  sprang. 
Most  of  all,  I  think  that  the  high  examples  of  a 
godly  profession  and  practice  in  the  leaders  of  the 
Old  South  made  it  easy  for  each  succeeding  gen- 
eration to  learn  the  first  and  noblest  of  all  lessons 
— reverence  for  God,  his  Word,  and  His  Church. 
And  until  this  day  the  reverence  of  the  Old 
South  is  constant  in  the  New  South.  While 
New  England,  once  the  citadel  of  an  orthodox 
Bible  and  Church  and  Sabbath,  is  now  the  prey 
of  isms  and  innovations  innumerable,  and  while 
the  great  West  is  marked  by  the  painful  contrast 
67 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


between  its  big  secular  enterprises  and  its  dimin- 
utive churches  and  congregations,  the  South  has 
continued  largely  to  be  not  only  the  acknowledged 
home  of  the  only  pure  Americanism,  but  the  cen- 
ter also  of  conservatism  and  reverence  in  the  wor- 
ship of  God  and  the  maintenance  of  Christian 
institutions. 

In  no  section  of  our  country  has  the  Chris- 
tian Sabbath  been  so  highly  honored,  Canada 
alone,  with  her  reverently  ordered  day  of  rest, 
exceeding  us  in  Sabbath  observance.  Here  and 
there,  however,  is  needed  the  cautionary  signal  of 
danger  against  the  greed  of  railroad  and  other 
law-defying  corporations,  and  the  loose  morality 
of  aliens  who  come  to  us  with  money  but  without 
religious  raising  or  conviction.  In  no  other  sec- 
tion is  there  such  widely  diffused  catholicity  of 
spirit  and  tolerance  of  differences  among  opposJ 
ing  religious  beliefs.  If  the  Roman  Catholic  has 
been  freer  from  assault  upon  his  religion  in  any 
country  or  time  than  in  the  South,  I  have  failed 
to  find  it.  If  the  Jew  has  as  kindly  treatment 
elsewhere  under  the  sun,  I  should  be  glad  to 
know  it.  And  if  there  is  as  fine  a  courtesy  and 
fraternity  anywhere  as  among  our  Southern 
6£ 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


Protestant  bodies,  I  have  yet  to  discover  it. 
A  few  months  ago,  though  of  another  denom- 
ination, I  was  called  to  their  platform  by  the 
great  Southern  Baptist  Assembly.  A  month  be- 
fore that  I  was  summoned  by  the  Cumberland 
Presbyterian  Seminary,  of  Lebanon,  to  instruct 
its  young  men.  A  month  before  that  I  was 
writing  articles  for  the  chief  religious  organ  of 
the  Southern  Presbyterians.  I  have  lived  long 
enough  and  am  familiar  enough  with  other  parts 
of  the  world  to  know  that  such  practical  cath- 
olicity chiefly  obtains  in  the  South. 

Nowhere  as  in  the  South  do  men  so  generally 
honor  the  house  of  God  by  their  attendance  and 
support.  I  make  bold  to  say  that  upon  any  Sab- 
bath day  by  count  more  men  may  be  found  in 
churches  in  Richmond  and  Atlanta  than  in  Chi- 
cago and  New  York,  though  the  combined  popu- 
lation of  the  latter  cities  is  ten  times  that  of  the 
former.  These  same  churchgoing  men  of  the 
South,  following  in  the  footsteps  of  their  God- 
fearing fathers,  are  the  members  and  supporters 
of  Southern  Churches,  and  are  quick  to  resent 
innovation  or  disturbance  of  the  old  order.  No 
man  is  so  reverent  and  courteous  toward  men 
69 


THE     OLD    SOUTH 


of  the  cloth  as  the  men  of  the  South,  and  wher- 
ever a  minister  of  the  gospel  walks  down  the 
street  of  a  Southern  city  or  village,  if  worthy  to 
wear  the  cloth  of  his  sacred  calling,  he  is  the 
foremost  man  of  his  community  in  standing  and 
influence. 

Why  this  relative  respect  to  the  minister  and 
the  Church,  and  this  clinging  to  religious  forms 
and  traditions,  those  of  us  who  came  up  out  of 
the  Old  South  understand.  Any  reverent  spirit 
of  the  New  South  in  matters  of  religion  is  an- 
other of  the  heritages  from  the  Old  South. 
Then  as  now,  even  more  than  now,  with  our 
leaders  and  great  men  it  was  religion  first,  pol- 
itics second,  and  money,  or  whatever  money  stood 
for,  last  and  least.  From  my  earliest  recollec- 
tion and  reading,  the  governors,  senators,  con- 
gressmen, judges,  great  lawyers,  physicians, 
merchants,  and  planters  were  commonly  Chris- 
tian men,  both  by  profession  and  practice;  and 
the  man  who  was  hostile  or  even  indifferent  to 
the  Church  and  religion,  however  distinguished 
and  brilliant  he  might  be,  was  under  ban  of  pub- 
lic opinion.  As  a  commentary  upon  this  signifi- 
cant religious  affiliation  of  Southern  leadership  I 
70 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


carefully  noted  a  few  years  ago,  in  two  contrast- 
ing lists  taken  at  random  of  governors  and  con- 
gressmen, that  while  one  list  had  five  men  out 
of  twenty-five  who  were  members  of  Christian 
Churches,  the  Southern  list  of  twenty-five  con- 
tained eighteen.  While  I  share  in  the  wide- 
spread regret  that  our  Southern  young  men  are 
not  as  reverent  as  were  those  of  a  generation 
ago,  and  are  often  conspicuous  by  absence  upon 
Sabbath  worship,  yet  in  view  of  such  facts  as  I 
am  recounting  I  am  more  hopeful  of  the  solu- 
tion of  the  vexed  problem  of  Christian  young 
manhood  in  the  South  than  in  any  other  part  of 
the  land. 


I  HAVE  paid  tribute  to  the  great  political  ora- 
tors of  the  Old  South.  Let  me  pay  higher 
tribute  to  its  great  preachers  and  pulpit  orators, 
to  whom,  under  God,  more  than  to  any  other  class 
or  leadership,  is  clue  what  the  South  has  ever 
cherished  as  its  best.  There  were  giants  in  those 
days.  If  Yancey  or  Stephens  could  cast  a  spell 
upon  a  great  political  gathering,  and  play  upon  its 
7i 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


emotions  as  the  harper  plays  upon  the  harp, 
George  F.  Pierce  in  his  prime  could  stir  men's 
hearts  in  a  way  that  put  to  shame  even  the  elo- 
quence of  the  political  rostrum.  The  last  time  I 
heard  this  greatest  of  all  the  orators  of  the  Old 
South  was  not  far  from  the  time  of  his  death. 
Marvin,  fittingly  called  the  "St.  John  of  Meth- 
odism," sat  in  the  pulpit  behind  him.  To  most  of 
his  audience  Pierce  and  his  preaching  were  known 
only  by  hearsay,  and  their  firm  belief  was  that 
Marvin  was  the  real  prince  of  the  pulpit.  I  re- 
member how  Pierce  battled  against  his  bodily 
weakness  and  weariness,  and  how  there  came  to 
his  eye  that  wondrous  flash  as  his  old-time  elo- 
quence lifted  him  into  heights  and  visions  celes- 
tial. He  was  preaching  of  the  pure  faith  once  de- 
livered unto  the  saints,  and  pleading  for  the  old 
order  of  simple  gospel  truth  and  living.  He  had 
something  to  say  of  the  new  order  of  ministers 
who  were  substituting  doubts  and  denials  for  the 
long-cherished  doctrines  of  the  Church.  His 
opening  sentence  was:  "A  single  meteor  flash- 
ing athwart  the  heavens  will  arrest  a  larger  meas- 
ure of  attention  than  the  serene  shining  of  a 
thousand  planets."  I  think  I  know  who  the  old 
72 


.... 

1  -     ' 

C   * 

■gr        mf     <: 

THE    OLD    SOUTH 


man  eloquent  meant.  A  little  while  before,  a 
dapper  preacher,  consumed  bv  itch  for  popular- 
ity, had  been  dispensing  a  perfumed  and  smoke- 
less theology  that  drew  great  crowds  and  tickled 
the  ears  of  the  groundlings.  The  theology  of 
the  Old  South  was  too  crude  and  barbarous  and 
unscientific  for  such  as  he.  Genesis  was  an  alle- 
gory, creation  an  evolution,  man  was  pre- 
Adamic,  the  deluge  was  only  a  local  shower,  the 
Pentateuch  was  polychromatic,  Moses  was 
largely  mythical,  there  were  two  Isaiahs,  all  the 
ante-exilian  history  and  writings  were  concocted 
by  pious  post-exilian  experts,  the  incarnation  and 
resurrection  were  touching  legends  but  "quite  un- 
scientific," hell  was  "hades,"  and  hades  was  a 
tolerably  comfortable  winter  resort,  and  Bible 
inspiration,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  seldom  inspired. 
Many  times,  in  sight  and  sound  of  such  dainty 
apostles  of  an  emasculate  Bible,  have  I  longed 
for  the  ghosts  of  the  stalwart  preachers  of  my 
childhood — the  Pierces,  Thomas  Sanford,  Jef- 
ferson Hamilton,  A.  L.  P.  Green,  P.  P.  Neely, 
Jesse  Boring,  McTyeire,  Wightman,  Summers, 
and  the  like — to  rise  up  in  their  godly  wrath  and 
shake  them  over  the  flaming  pit  of  a  real  old- 
73 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


time,  unabridged  "hades"  long  enough  to  bring 
them  to  silence  and  repentance. 

Down  in  the  straw,  at  the  mourners'  bench  of 
an  Old  South  camp  meeting,  some  of  us  got  our 
theology  and  our  religion.  The  Bible,  in  miracle 
and  prophecy,  was  handled  by  reverent  hands, 
and  made  most  real  to  us  as  the  infallible  word 
of  Almighty  God.  The  law  of  Sinai,  with  un- 
expurgated  cursings  and  blessings,  was  read  to 
us  amid  the  groanings  of  our  troubled  con- 
sciences. No  ear  so  polite,  no  position  so  ex- 
alted, but  a  living  and  burning  hell  was  de- 
nounced against  its  meannesses.  As  deep  as  the 
virus  of  sin  in  our  souls  sank  the  flashing,  two- 
edged  sword  of  the  Spirit.  The  wound  was 
made  purposely  deep  and  wide  that  the  balm  of 
Gilead  might  enter  and  heal  the  utmost  roots  of 
sin.  By  and  by,  when  John  the  Baptists,  like 
Boring  and  Lovick  Pierce,  had  cut  to  the  quick, 
and  laid  bare  the  wounded  spirit,  some  gentler, 
wooing  ministry,  like  that  of  Hamilton  or  Neely, 
came  pointing  the  way  to  the  cross.  There  was 
no  lifting  of  the  finger  tip,  daintily  gloved  and 
decorous,  in  token  of  a  desire  sometime  or  other 
to  become  a  Christian.  Cards,  in  colors,  bear- 
74 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


ing  name  and  rates  of  the  evangelist,  agreeing 
to  meet  everybody  in  heaven,  were  not  passed 
around  for  signatures.  I  never  hear  the  old 
hymn  of  invitation,  that  lured  many  a  hardened 
sinner  of  the  Old  South,  as  they  sung  it  under 
the  leafy  arbor  to  flickering  lights,  after  a  weird, 
unearthly  stirring  of  our  hearts  by  the  man  in 
the  pulpit,  but  I  think  of  a  great  criminal  law- 
yer, who  for  many  years  had  led  the  bar  of  his 
State,  and  had  made  mock  of  God's  Book  and 
Church  and  ministers.  He  owned  an  old  car- 
riage driver  who  was  one  of  God's  saints  in 
black,  gray-haired  and  patient  "Uncle  Aleck," 
who  had  mourned  and  prayed  over  his  unbeliev- 
ing master.  "Uncle  Aleck,"  he  said  to  him  one 
day,  "why  do  you  believe  in  a  book  you  can't 
read,  and  in  a  God  you  never  saw  ?  I  have  thou- 
sands of  books  in  my  library,  yet  I  care  nothing 
for  religion."  Uncle  Aleck's  only  reply  was  to 
put  his  hand  on  his  heart  and  say :  "Marse  John, 
I've  been  true  and  faithful  to  you  all  these  years, 
ain't  I,  marster?"  "Yes."  "And  I  never  lied 
to  you  or  disobeyed  you,  has  I,  Marse  John?" 
"No."  "Then,  marster,  it's  my  religion  that  has 
made  me  what  I  am.  I  can't  read,  I  can't  see 
75 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


God,  but  I  know  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  here  in 
my  heart." 

Drawn  by  some  spell  he  could  not  resist,  the 
great  lawyer  came  to  the  old  camp  ground  and 
heard  the  awfully  solemn  message  of  the  preach- 
er with  bowed  head  and  heart  full  of  trouble. 
When  the  hymn  was  sung, 

"Come,  humble  sinner,  in  whose  breast 

A  thousand  thoughts  revolve; 
Come,  with  your  guilt  and  fear  oppressed, 
And  make  this  last  resolve," 

I  shall  never  forget  the  startled  look  of  preacher 
and  people  as  straight  to  the  mourners'  bench 
sped  the  lawyer,  crying  in  agony  as  he  fell  to  the 
ground :  "Send  for  Uncle  Aleck !"  And  down 
in  the  straw  white-haired  old  Aleck  wrestled 
with  God  for  Marse  John,  until  a  great  shout 
went  up  from  mourner  and  congregation  as  the 
master  hugged  the  old  darky  and  the  darky 
hugged  his  master,  saying:  "I  knew  it  was  com- 
ing, Marse  John."  You  will  pardon  a  man 
whose  head  is  growing  gray  if  at  times  the  heart 
grows  hungry  to  turn  back  and  see  and  hear  the 
old  sights  and  sounds  of  God's  presence  and 
76 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


power  as  revealed  especially  at  the  ancient  and 
now  nearly  extinct  camp  meeting. 


ON  a  bright  April  day,  1861,  books  were 
closed  in  the  old  academy,  there  was  the 
blare  of  bugle  and  roll  of  drum  on  the  streets,  peo- 
ple were  hurrying  together,  and  soon  the  roar  of 
a  cannon  shook  the  building,  as  they  told  us  of  the 
bombardment  of  Sumter  by  the  batteries  of  the 
young  Confederacy.  For  months  the  very  air 
had  been  vibrant  with  sound  of  drum  and  fife,  of 
rattling  musket  and  martial  command.  The  Old 
South  was  soon  a  great  camp  of  shifting,  drilling 
soldiery.  Every  departing  train  bore  to  the 
front  the  raw  and  ungainly  troops  of  the  coun- 
try, the  trim  city  companies  of  State  guards,  and 
the  gayly  dressed  cadets  of  the  military  schools. 
There  were  tender  partings  and  long  good-bys, 
so  long  to  many  of  them  that  not  yet  has  word 
of  home  greeting  come.  It  seemed  a  great  thing 
to  be  a  soldier  in  those  brave  days  when  the  girls 
decked  the  parting  ones  in  flowers  and  sang  to 
them  "The  Girl  I  Left  Behind  Me,"  "Bonnie  Blue 
77 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


Flag,"  and  "Maryland,  My  Maryland."  The 
scarlet  and  gold  and  gray,  the  flashing  sword  and 
burnished  musket,  the  gay  flowers  and  parting 
song,  marked  the  beginning  of  that  mighty  death 
struggle  of  the  Old  South.  Soon  the  gay  song 
deepened  into  the  hush  before  a  great  battle,  or 
rose  into  the  cry  of  the  stricken  heart  over  the 
long  lists  of  wounded  and  slain.  War  grew 
grim  and  fierce  and  relentless.  There  were  hun- 
ger and  wounds,  pale  faces  in  hospital  and  sharp 
death  of  men  at  the  front;  and  sleeplessness  and 
heartache  and  holy  privation  and  unfailing  cour- 
age and  comfort  of  Southern  womanhood  at 
home.  Fiercer  and  hotter  came  the  storm  of 
battle,  as  the  thin  gray  lines  of  Lee  and  Johnston 
confronted  the  soldiery  and  the  resources  of  the 
world.  Manassas,  Sharpsburg,  Fredericksburg, 
Seven  Pines,  Chancellorsville,  Vicksburg,  Gettys- 
burg, the  Wilderness,  Cold  Harbor,  Petersburg, 
Appomattox! — how  these  names,  that  wreathed 
with  crape  their  thousands  of  hearts  and  homes, 
and  marked  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  battle  tide, 
recall  to  us  the  passing  of  the  Old  South ! 

On  another  April  day  in  1865,  as  a  boy  in  Ma- 
hone's  Division,  I  looked  my  last  into  the  face 
78 


THE    OLD    SOUTH 


of  the  Old  South  and  its  great  commander,  who 
came  riding  down  the  line  of  our  stacked  guns, 
and,  halting  his  old  gray  war  horse  Traveler, 
tried  to  comfort  our  hearts  by  saying:  "It's  all 
over.  Never  mind,  men;  you  have  done  your 
best.  Go  to  your  homes  and  be  as  brave  and  true 
as  you  have  been  with  me." 

In  the  great  day  of  national  assize,  when  em- 
pire, kingdom,  and  republic  of  earth  shall  be 
gathered  to  judgment,  and  the  Muse  of  history 
shall  unroll  the  record  of  their  good  and  evil,  the 
Old  South,  the  "uncrowned  queen"  of  the  cen- 
turies, will  be  in  their  midst,  her  white  vestment 
stained  by  the  blood  of  her  sons,  her  eyes  dimmed 
by  sorrow  and  suffering.  No  chaplet  of  laurel 
shall  encircle  her  brow,  and  no  noisy  trump  of 
fame  shall  hail  her  coming;  but  round  her  fair, 
proud  head,  as  of  yore,  shall  shine  a  halo  of  love, 
and  Fame  shall  hang  her  head  rebuked,  and  the 
trumpet  fall  from  her  nerveless  hand,  as  the  spirit 
of  the  Old  South  is  passing  by. 
79 


T1IH  13dVH0  IV  ON  dO  AllSd3AIND 


